James Cromwell Is PETA’s ‘Person of the Year’
London – For fearlessly stepping up for animals at every turn and helping PETA achieve major victories for dogs and monkeys in laboratories, speaking out against the live export of pigs from Ireland, and pressuring Starbucks to end its vegan milk upcharge in the US, Succession star James Cromwell is PETA’s 2022 Person of the Year. In honour of his wonderful contributions to animal rights and because his empathy knows no bounds, PETA US is naming its Los Angeles event space The James Cromwell Empathy Center.
Cromwell’s fire for animal rights was sparked decades ago by his role in Babe, which inspired him to go vegan. Now in his 80s, he’s bringing about change and racking up victories with the energy and enthusiasm of a teenager. Notches in his belt include persuading Air France to end its shipments of monkeys to laboratories by folding his 6-foot-7-inch frame into a shipping crate at Los Angeles International Airport and helping to shut down Texas A&M University’s deplorable canine muscular dystrophy laboratory. Cromwell was arrested and carted off to jail for protesting the lab’s tests, and this year, Texas A&M made the seismic announcement that it would be putting the remaining nine dogs, who had been transferred to another laboratory, up for adoption.
Most recently, Cromwell superglued his hand to the counter at a Starbucks café in New York to protest the company’s surcharge on vegan milks in its US branches, and if his record is anything to go by, it’s only a matter of time before the chain buckles and agrees to price vegan and dairy milks equally in the US, as it has already done in the UK.
“James Cromwell’s compassion for all animals knows no bounds,” says PETA Vice President for the UK, Europe, and Australia Mimi Bekhechi. “He’s PETA’s Person of the Year for playing a vital part in our hard-fought campaigns on behalf of animals whose abuse is kept hidden as they are confined to cages, exploited, and killed.”
PETA US is also releasing a rapid-fire Q&A video featuring Cromwell, in which the actor reveals a hidden cheeky side, sharing that his last meal would be magic mushrooms, his cat makes him laugh harder than anyone, and today’s generation of animal activists needs to be “implacable and confrontational” – qualities he’s demonstrated in spades when sticking up for animals.
Previous winners include Billie Eilish, Sir Lewis Hamilton, and Ricky Gervais.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
Contact:
Elisa Allen +44 (0) 07525 411733; [email protected]
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