Award-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence, made famous by The Hunger Games franchise, earned $52 million in pre-tax earnings over the last 12 months and topped Forbes' list of the world's highest paid actresses of 2015.

She led the race with a $16.5 million difference from the first-runner up Scarlett Johansson, who earned $35.5 million.

China's Fan Bingbing, at fourth spot with $21 million paycheck, is the only non-American who made it on the list. Perhaps best known by western cinemagoers for her role in X-Men: Days of Future Past, Fan has domestic productions such as The White-Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom to thank for her earnings, as well as lucrative sums from endorsements with world-famous brands such as Chopard and L'Oreal.

Last year's top-earner Sandra Bullock saw her paycheck plummet from $51 million last year, thanks to the success of Gravity, to $8 million this year. Others like Emma Stone (16th at $6.5 million) and Kristen Stewart (9th at $12 million) need to thank their performances in indie films over box office hits for their spots on this year's list.

Actresses still earn less than actors, as only four of them made north of the $20 million mark, whereas 21 actors did so this year.

"The really top [female] stars get paid the same thing as their male counterparts, the problem is the averages dontt work because there are not enough parts for women to star in for them to get paid," said Sony's former co-chair Amy Pascal, then one of two female studio heads with Universal's Donna Langley, in a 2013 interview with Forbes.