Jessica Chastain has praised "incredible" James McAvoy for his stance on equal pay.
The 42-year-old actress has been a vocal campaigner for gender equality and is delighted her ‘IT: Chapter Two’ co-star shares her views and even spoke out before it was "cool" to do so.
She said: "I’m going to say something nice about James McAvoy here. Before the #MeToo movement, before Time’s Up, before anything like that, James was always a proponent of equal pay.
"Even when we did ‘The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby’ [in 2013], he and I were doing the same amount of work, the same everything, and we got equal pay for that movie.
"He’s always been a proponent of that.
"He’s posted about it on his Instagram before it was the cool thing to do.
"He’s an incredible human being."
Jessica thinks it is "very exciting" that the issue has become less of a "taboo" subject in Hollywood and it’s given her "hope" for the future.
She told Britain’s OK! magazine: "I’ve been talking about it for a very long time, since 2012, when I did ‘Zero Dark Thirty’.
"I’m pretty sure certain people think I don’t talk about anything else, but it’s very exciting to see that other people are really interested in it now.
"It doesn’t really feel like it’s a taboo subject any more.
"For the longest time women were afraid to say they were feminists. It was a dirty word to say.
"If you said you were a feminist, people would look at you like there was something wrong with you.
"I love the fact that I now see lots of young women coming out and saying it – and there’s no problem with it.
"They are able to express themselves in a more equal manner now. That gives me a lot of hope."
Jessica Chastain praises James McAvoy
