British DJ: Calvin Harris Outshines Jennifer Lawrence With $66m In Earnings

A new ranking of the highest-paid DJs in the world shows that fortune favors the white male.
Scottish DJ Calvin Harris, who is dating Taylor Swift, tops the list with a $66million fortune, far surpassing the earnings of the highest-paid actress in the world, Jennifer Lawrence.The pay gap in Hollywood has long been an issue in the industry, but the salaries of the top DJs and actresses have rarely been compared.

When listed side by side, it’s impossible to ignore how actresses are bringing home noticeably less than the mostly white-male producers who press play on their laptops for the raving crowd.

While the top DJs are making consistently more than actress, that might not be the case next year.

Thanks to the Sony hack, which revealed the salaries of nearly every actor who worked on a production connected to the company, women in the industry are pushing for more.

One of the most embarrassing salary details exposed in the leak was that Lawrence was paid considerably less for than the male actors in American Hustle, despite being the biggest name attached to the project at the time.

However, Harris (real name Adam Wiles) has certainly worked hard for his success. At the age of 18, he moved to London with hopes of breaking into the music industry as a recording artist himself. But times were so tough early on that he was forced to move back home to Dumfries, Scotland where he worked in fish factories and grocery stores while he waited for a record deal. He was soon discovered after posting his music to Myspace, and released his first album, I Created Disco, in 2007.

While Harris’ 80s-inspired pop songs were a success, his career took a sharp turn in 2011 when he started producing dance music with the likes of Rhianna, Florence Welch and Kylie Minogue.

It was in the EDM community that Harris struck gold, and last year his album ‘Motion’ debuted at the top of the U.S. dance charts. Additionally, Harris has been able to market his good looks for even more income as the face of Giorgio Armani’s eye ear and watch lines. Meanwhile, he keeps up weekly appearances in Las Vegas where he reportedly charges $400,000 per performance for his residency at nightclubs Hakkasan and Omnia.