It's just that, for the first film, some heroines act in a film at a cut-throat remuneration. Some don't even charge enough that their flight tickets will be more costly than what they are paid.
However, all this happens only until they score their first blockbuster. Once these heroines score a hit, the payment keeps getting hiked for each passing movie. That's how a Sreeleela who charged ₹15 lakhs for her debut film rose up to ₹3-5 crores remuneration per film now.
But then, there are also heroines like Aishwarya Lekshmi, who is proving her mettle big time with each film, but not even hiking her remuneration. From the last 5 years, it's being heard that Aishwarya Lekshmi haven't hiked her remuneration. This is because she feels that currently she doesn't have a market value where she could bring audiences to the theatres directly in her sole image alone. While she's acting in films like the Tamil movie Gatta Kusti 2, and then Sai Durga Teja's Sambarala Yeti Gattu in Telugu, the actress still charges very low price only.
Despite scoring big hits and getting noticed for performances in films like Maniratnam's Ponniyan Selvan and other projects, it's great to see that Aishwarya isn't hiking the paycheck. Also that's the reason why she is grabbing some interesting prjects in the recent times.