Jennifer Lawrence tops Forbes' actress earnings list-but she's no Rock

IT DOESN'T matter where you fall on the pay scale, women seem to get paid less than men.

It's become such a commonly discussed issue, Secret is using a nervous young woman rehearsing her raise speech in a bathroom mirror . . . to sell deodorant.

Even near the top of the wage food chain, with the movie stars of Hollywood, a town with progressive liberal views but standard business practices, the top actresses, according to Forbes, make considerably less than the top actors.

Thanks, Forbes.

According to the magazine, Dwayne Johnson, No. 1 actor (this is not a quality assessment), earned $64.5 million in the Forbes fiscal year. Jennifer Lawrence, No. 1 actress, earned $46 million (about 71 percent).

On the actor side of the ledger behind Johnson, there was Jackie Chan ($61 million), Matt Damon ($55 million), Tom Cruise ($53 million) and Johnny Depp ($48 million).

On the actress side behind Lawrence, from the new list Forbes released Tuesday, there's Melissa McCarthy ($33 million), Scarlett Johansson ($25 million), Jennifer Aniston ($21 million), China's Fan Bingbing ($17 million), Charlize Theron ($16.5 million), Amy Adams ($13.5 million), Julia Roberts ($12 million), Mila Kunis ($11 million) and India's Deepika Padukone ($10 million).

The Washington Post reports that 90 percent of the women on the Forbes did endorsements to supplement their less-than-male movie earnings. Take Jennifer Aniston. With her Friends royalties slowing, Aniston still makes piles of dough from Emirates airlines, Smartwater, Aveeno and Living Proof, according to Forbes.

Some of the gender gap is due to old-fashioned chauvinism, but some of it is due to you.

Yeah, you.

More movies star men, so there are more movie-star salaries going to men. If more of you support movies with women, women will get more roles and make more money.

Unfortunately, you'll be out more money going to the movies.

But it's not low pay for every woman. CD-selling, arena-filling pop music goddess Taylor Swift topped Forbes' annual list of the 100 highest-paid celebrities released earlier this summer.

She brought in $170 million.

Former Fox News host

Andrea Tantaros

has charged in a lawsuit she was sexually harassed by former network chief

Roger Ailes

and other top executives.

The defendants in the suit filed Monday in Manhattan include William Shine, who was named co-president of Fox News after Ailes resigned in July because of a sexual harassment suit filed by another dropped anchor, Gretchen Carlson.

Ailes, of course, denies the charges.

"Fox News masquerades as a defender of traditional family values, but behind the scenes, it operates like a sex-fueled, Playboy Mansion-like cult, steeped in intimidation, indecency and misogyny," Tantaros charges in the tabloid-prose suit.

Tantaros says that her complaint is not just about Ailes but that "it also gives life to the saying that 'the fish stinks from the head.' "

Is this a lawsuit or a Scorsese movie?

Tantaros' legal battles with Fox began last winter when the network said she had breached her employment contract by writing a book without getting network clearance.

Fox has said Tantaros made up the sexual harassment allegations as a ploy in the contract dispute.

But Tantaros says in her complaint that Fox executives used the dispute about the book to try to silence her.

Tantaros' book was called, somewhat ironically, Tied Up in Knots: How Getting What We Wanted Made Women Miserable.

Tantaros says she was subjected to "demeaning conduct" such as having to strip in front of Fox News wardrobe personnel when she picked her on-air clothing.

Tantaros says that when she complained about the harassment to Shine in spring 2015, he told her Ailes was "a very powerful man" and she "needed to let this one go."

* Louisiana native

Britney Spears

is giving the clothes off her back to raise money for the Red Cross to benefit victims of the flooding in her home state.

More than 115,000 people across south Louisiana have signed up for federal disaster assistance after catastrophic flooding.

Spears tweeted out links Tuesday to a fundraising site that offers $10 raffle tickets to win an outfit from her performance on Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards or a trip to New York to see her at the show in person.

How much are tickets to not have to see the VMAs?

- Daily News wire services

contributed to this report.

gensleh@phillynews.com

215-854-5678 @DNTattle