Jennifer Lawrence has been named as the highest-paid female movie star for the second consecutive year, with her earnings from the final instalment of The Hunger Games primarily responsible.

The 26 year old American star’s income for the 12 months spanning June 2015 to June 2016 was $46 million, according to the annual list published by Forbes. Although this was down by approximately 11.5% from last year, it was accounted for by earnings from Mockingjay Part 2, in which she took a cut of the box office takings, and the big-budget X-Men: Apocalypse as well indie hits such as Joy.

Lawrence was also the youngest actress, and the only one under the age of 30, on the list of twenty stars, which substantially looks the same as it did last year.

Jennifer LawrenceJennifer Lawrence is the highest-paid female actor in Hollywood for the second year running

Memorably, the Kentucky-born star wrote an essay on the Hollywood gender pay gap for Lena Dunham’s newsletter Lenny last October, but despite that issue gaining more traction her earnings are still only believed to be around half of the highest-paid male star in the industry - whose identity will be revealed in a similar list published by Forbes in the near future.

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In second place in the list was Melissa McCarthy, whose earnings were $10 million up from 2015 at a total of $33 million. She reportedly earned an eight-figure pay day for her role in Paul Feig’s all-female re-boot of Ghostbusters, which came out last month.

“I started to think if I could do anything to build women up rather than the constant tear down I’m going to do it,” McCarthy told Forbes in an interview.

McCarthy displaced Scarlett Johansson, who was recently declared the tenth highest paid movie star of all time, who dropped to third place and whose earnings, totalling $25 million, were again largely accounted for by her reprisal of the Black Widow role in the Marvel cinematic universe.

Jennifer Aniston was fourth with $21 million; Chinese actress Fan Bingbing was in fifth, and various other huge names such as Charlize Theron, Amy Adams and Mila Kunis. Data was collected from IMDb, Nielsen and Box Office Mojo.

Notable absences included Sandra Bullock and Angelina Jolie, both of whom had topped the Forbes list in previous years (2014 and 2013 respectively).

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