It turns out that some of your favorite celebrities may also be vegetarians. Pamela Anderson, Paul McCartney, Alicia Silverstone, Moby and Andre 3000 of Outkast are among the many vegan celebrities who have decided to stop eating meat due to the damage factory farming does to animals, our health and the planet.
Former Beatle Paul McCartney said he became interested in animal rights as a child. Disney movies like Bambi and Dumbo instilled in him the belief that cruelty to animals is a bad idea. He once said, “If you think about Bambi, a hunter kills his mother and I think that made me grow up thinking that hunting isn’t cool.”
McCartney finally decided to go vegetarian when he and his wife Linda were eating lamb and saw lambs frolicking in a field. This experience helped him make the connection between the food on his plate and the living, conscious animals.
Supermodel and former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson has been a vegetarian since she was 16 years old. In high school, she used to donate quarters to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the popular nonprofit animal rights organization. Since then, the vegetarian celebrity has become an active activist for PETA, participating in many of her campaigns, including anti-fur, seal hunting and Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Alicia Silverstone, the young actress who debuted in the movie Clueless, became a vegan in 1998 for moral and political reasons. She once told talk show host Rosie O’Donnell that she became a vegan because she “was no longer going to contribute to violence in the world.” She said going vegan meant putting food back into the mouths of starving children, as crops to feed cows could be used to feed villages.
Silverstone also has her own garden, where she grows vegetables like lettuce, kale, and pumpkins. “Making your own salad from your own garden is just amazing,” she once told talk show host Ellen DeGeneres.
Singer Moby first exposed his veganism on a harrowing punk rock album titled Animal Rights, arguably the most controversial album of his career. Since then, he has taken a more utilitarian approach to make his message more accessible to the masses.
Moby encourages vegetarians and vegans to become sellers of what they believe in. He himself does this by aggressively defending vegetarianism in the public eye. Moby also promotes vegetarianism at his vegetarian tea shop, Teany.
Outkast star Andre 3000 is also a vegan celebrity. In 2004, he won the PETA award for Sexiest Male Vegetarian. When Andre was asked what he would do on his last day on Earth, he said, “I’d probably go for a nice meal, probably some broccoli, because I’m a vegetarian.”
Other notable vegan celebrities include Coldplay’s Steve Martin, Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, Avril Lavigne, Fall Out Boy’s Andy Hurley, Natalie Portman, Good Charlotte’s Benji and Joel Madden, Alec Baldwin, Anne Hathaway, Joaquin Phoenix, Tobey Maguire, Shania Twain and Weird Al. Yankovic.