Natalie Portman: Green Swan!
Natalie Portman arrives at a screening of her film "Black Swan"
Born in Jerusalem, Israel as Natalie Hershlag, Portman was a vegetarian since childhood. But the 29-year-old turned wholly vegan after reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals. The book is about what's wrong with the modern way in which most of the animals we eat are produced, the genetic manipulation of the breeding stock to produce maximum feed-to-meat conversion, regardless of the suffering it causes.
"The human cost of factory farming - both the compromised welfare of slaughterhouse workers and, even more, the environmental effects of the mass production of animals - is staggering," she says.
Portman has been an advocate of environmental causes since childhood, when she joined an environmental song and dance troupe known as World Patrol Kids at the age of 12 - crooning lyrics like "Recycle it, renew it, if we can reuse it, why should we lose it? Show you care!"
