George and Julia and Meryl and Bennifer

Close Read: SAG-AFTRA’s big givers.

Last week I said “The Time Is Now (To Announce Your Divorce)” and if Natalie Portman reads this newsletter she has to tell me…

Photo: @sagaftraFOUND

It’s been just over 20 days since SAG-AFTRA called a strike for a fair contract and better protections for its membership. On Wednesday, the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, a non-profit that’s associated with the union but not part of the union, shared a list of A-listers who have made donations of or above $1 million dollars to the emergency financial assistance. The influx of cash comes from people with big hearts (Leonardo DiCaprio) or big mouths (Matt Damon). Donating money to actors currently unemployed due to the executive greed of the studios is a good thing! But this list, as one reader suggested, is a rich text.

A special round of press interviews celebrated Johnson’s singular “historic” donation. (The exact dollar amount is confidential.) But that undisclosed sum wasn’t enough to bump his name above the regular alphabetical order, where he’s sandwiched between Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman. 

• George and Amal Clooney: The mayor and first lady of Hollywood, and they’d lead this list even if it weren’t alphabetical.

• Luciana and Matt Damon: Not “Matt Damon and Luciana Barroso,” or even “Luciana Barroso and Matt Damon,” but “Luciana and Matt Damon.” The mind reels! I’ve read married couples do something similar, where the more recognizable partner gets the last name but … dang … Luciana just hanging out at the front like that, like a dangling modifier? Matt Damon, previously very private, is now doing that Will Smith thing, turning on the slow drip of strange over-shares. (Christopher Nolan came up in his marriage counseling?? Now their Dr. Orna has something else to discuss.) 

• Leonardo DiCaprio: I really have nothing to say about this other than I can’t believe this is the closest Blake Lively and Leonardo DiCaprio have been since they dated while she shot the LA episodes of Gossip Girl, or whatever. Long live their doll pics.