NEW YORK -- Robin Wright recently demanded to be paid the same as co-star Kevin Spacey for her work on "House of Cards," the 50-year-old actor told a roomful of activists, philanthropists and media on Tuesday at the Rockefeller Foundation.

I was like, 'I want to be paid the same as Kevin, said Wright, who plays Claire Underwood, the sinister counterpart and co-conspirator to Spacey's President Frank Underwood on Netflixs popular show. Wright is a producer and occasional director for "House of Cards."

"It was a perfect paradigm. There are very few films or TV shows where the male, the patriarch, and the matriarch are equal. And they are in 'House of Cards,'" said Wright, who had been talking about the problem of equal pay for women more generally.

I was looking at statistics and Claire Underwood's character was more popular than [Frank's] for a period of time. So I capitalized on that moment. I was like, 'You better pay me or Im going to go public,' Wright said with her trademark blinding-white grin. And they did.