56-Year-Old US Celebrity Shocked After Asking for Double Her Salary — And Getting It: 'I Didn't Know I Could Do That'

Not negotiating a starting salary could cost a worker more than $634,000 (£479,000) over a lifetime. Meryl Streep nearly left millions on the table herself, and she had two Oscars at the time.

The actress revealed on NBC's Today that when studios offered her the role of Miranda Priestly in 2006's The Devil Wears Prada, she turned the offer down flat and countered at double. They agreed immediately. According to Celebrity Net Worth, her initial offer was approximately $2.5 million (£1.89 million). She walked away with roughly $5 million (£3.78 million).

'I'm 56 years old. It took me this long to understand that I could do that,' Streep said. 'They needed me, I felt. But that was a lesson.'

Research from Harvard Law School's Programme on Negotiation helps explain why it may have taken her that long. Studies by Harvard Kennedy School professor Hannah Riley Bowles found that women who negotiated higher pay were consistently viewed as less likeable and less desirable to work with. Men who made identical requests faced no such penalty. For decades, that unspoken cost kept women across industries from asking.

Women Now Negotiate More Than Men. The Gap Still Won't Close

That dynamic has shifted. A 2024 study by researchers at UC Berkeley and Vanderbilt Business School surveyed nearly 1,000 graduates of a top US business school and found that 54 per cent of women negotiated salary for their first post-MBA job, compared with 44 per cent of men. Among nearly 2,000 alumni surveyed separately, 64 per cent of women and 59 per cent of men had negotiated promotions or higher compensation.

Women are asking. They are just not getting equal results. In the US, women's earnings have hovered around 80 to 82 per cent of men's for two decades. In the UK, the Office for National Statistics placed the full-time gender pay gap at 6.9 per cent in April 2025. Factor in part-time workers and the gap widens to 12.8 per cent, which translates to women earning 87 pence for every pound men earned on average.

'Women are willing to do their part to close the gender pay gap,' said Jessica Kennedy, a Vanderbilt professor who co-authored the study. 'Unfortunately, negotiating well isn't enough. It's not the source of the problem.'

The deeper issue, according to the researchers, lies in career trajectories rather than starting offers. Women remain underrepresented in higher-paying roles, and the gap widens sharply after 40. Among MBA graduates studied, women earned roughly 88 per cent of their male peers' salaries at graduation. A decade later, that figure dropped to 63 per cent.

The Lifetime Cost of Not Asking

None of that makes individual negotiations pointless. A 25-year-old who negotiates a starting salary just $5,000 (£3,780) above the initial offer can earn roughly $634,000 (£479,000) more over a 40-year career, assuming annual five per cent raises, according to Harvard's Programme on Negotiation. A Fidelity Investments survey found that 87 per cent of people who negotiated salary or benefits received at least some of what they asked for.

In the UK, where the pay gap is widest in high-earning fields like financial management (25.7 per cent), even small wins at the point of hire compound over time. UK law now requires employers with 250 or more staff to publish gender pay data annually, giving workers a concrete benchmark before walking into any negotiation.

Streep's situation was extraordinary. But what she described was not. A woman at the top of her field, with decades of proof behind her, who still had not tried asking for what she was worth. The research says she was far from alone. It also says the system needs to change around her. Until it does, the data is clear: not asking almost always costs more than asking.

The Devil Wears Prada grossed more than $325 million (£246 million) worldwide and earned Streep a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination. The sequel opened in cinemas on 1 May.