Celebrities have been criticized in recent years for practising escapism by throwing their full weight behind causes that are least expensive and ones that they don’t really care about. Many celebrities have been known to use activism just to buy public approval but Hollywood hasn’t fallen short of true activists either. Animals rights activism is one that many celebrities in Hollywood participate in and it has turned into a competition of sorts over the years. These 10 have emerged as the most passionate fighters for animal rights over the years.
Joaquin Phoenix
“We are all animals,” are the words The Joker star used on his billboard campaign with PETA campaigning for the end of Speciesism. He said that the idea that human beings are better than other animals was the root cause of most of the cruelty against animals all over the world. Phoenix also condemned all dog leather industries calling them the worst things he had ever seen in his life. He is a strict vegetarian having observed a vegan lifestyle since he was just 3 years old. He has been the voice of some of the most powerful PETA campaigns including one time when he drowned himself to show how much fish suffer when they are taken out of the water.
Betty White
Betty White is now nearly 100 years old making her one of the longest-serving celebrity animal rights activists in Hollywood history. She always loved animals and even said that she hoped to be a ranger of a zookeeper if her acting career hadn’t worked out. The star has been the director and later trustee of the Los Angeles Zoo. She is even more famous as an animal lover than she is as an actor. She once said that you can always tell a person from the way they place their hands on animals. She is said to have been one of the earliest talents in Hollywood that wouldn’t take a role in your film’s scenes showed the abuse of animals.
Peter Dinklage
Peter Dinklage is now one of the most famous actors in the world thanks to his role as Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones. What most people don’t know is that Dinklage has been a vegetarian for most of his life. In Game of Thrones, Dinklage only ate fake meats and not real food. He joined marches around the US calling for Americans to shun Labradors and Huskies and buy their pets from animal rescue centres instead. Dinklage reached the peak of his activism with an extremely graphic video dabbed Face Your Food in which he explains the suffering of animals in food factories around the US telling Americans that every time they buy milk, meat and eggs, they are promoting cruelty against animals.
Olivia Munn
Olivia Munn is especially famous for posing nude in his PETA campaigns. She is one of the most outspoken animal rights activists in Hollywood with a record that many people see as rather extreme. His most recent endeavour was the condemnation of a secretly filmed video that shows the cruelty of animals in China’s fur industry. She said that rabbits, minks and sheep are tortured, beaten, stomped and electrocuted just so that the fashion industry can have its fur. The Newsroom star then posed nude again next to a bunny saying humans don’t need fur to look beautiful and that fur only looks good on its original owners; The animals.
Alicia Silverstone
The Clueless star picked up a vegan lifestyle at the age of 21 and named herself the ambassador of kindness. She even created a company called Mykind Organics to foster the adoption of a vegan lifestyle by more people in America. She has also posed nude on multiple PETA billboards condemning the fashion industry for cruelty against animals. She said her inspiration was the documentary “The Witness,” which showed her that if she couldn’t eat her own dog, then she shouldn’t eat other farm animals. She now advocates for a switch to natural food products in order to save the planet and be kinder to animals.
Bob Barker
The Price Is Right which ran on CBS from 1972 to 2007 is still the longest-running daytime game show in American history and Bob Barker was its host. That is why he is so famous among millennials as well as 80s and 90s kids. Fighting for animal rights was the other side of his career. He is one of the most vocal critics of SeaWorld. He also donated huge amounts of money to charities that helped people rescue and groom their pets. Even in retirement, Barker still advocates for a vegan lifestyle among the elderly saying it prevents Alzheimer’s. He is known for rescuing so many animals including dogs and horses and he even has a farm which PETA calls a sanctuary for previously tortured animals to retire.
Leonardo DiCaprio
In 2019, PETA slammed DiCaprio for appearing next to an ape actor in his hit film The Wolf Of Wall Street. The group still acknowledges that DiCaprio id one of the most passionate protectors of animals and the environment in Hollywood. The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation is one of the largest organizations focused on protecting ecosystems and the climate as well as the rights of aboriginal communities. The organization is believed to be one of the biggest funders of elephant conservation efforts in Africa. Personally, DiCaprio doesn’t engage in much drama to prove his activism so PETA doesn’t have many billboards of him.
Ian Somerhalder
The Vampire Diaries star is one of those people whose sacrifices for the sake of animal welfare are just too big to ignore. He formed the Ian Somerhalder Foundation which also does everything related to helping people and animals from rescuing dogs in the streets of New York to building elephant shelters in jungles in Africa. He said he got the inspiration to save animals after watching the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill destroy ecosystems in his hometown of Louisiana.
Ellen DeGeneres
The Ellen Show is famous, but now, not as popular as The Ellen Fund which was founded in 2018 by DeGeneres wife Portia. The fund is dedicated to supporting the global conservation of endangered species with its biggest achievement being the purchase of a mountain gorilla conservation centre in Rwanda in 2018. DeGeneres uses her show to promote the need for kindness to animals and congratulate other celebrities who make the biggest sacrifices to animal conservation. She is also a big lover of dogs and also supports the mission to save dogs from rescue centres rather than buying them.
Miranda Kerr
The suffering of Koalas in the Australian bush fires has been an issue of concern for many animal rights activists around the world which brought the attention back to Miranda Kerr. The Australian Model is known for making huge donations to animal rescue centres including an elephant hospital in Thailand. She once posed naked on the cover of Rollingstone Green Issue with chains used to tie her to a tree while raising awareness of the suffering of Koalas in Australia. She is also a PETAAsia spokesperson against the testing of cosmetics on animals.