10 Confirmed Vegan Celebrities: Why They Chose a Plant-based Lifestyle

A passionate animal rights activist for most of his life, Joker actor Joaquin Phoenix has been vegan since he was three years old and demands that any animal skins he uses on films sets be made from faux materials. Joaquin hit the headlines at the 2020 Oscars during his acceptance speech for Best Actor where he slammed the dairy industry.

“We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable,” Phoenix pleaded to the star-studded crowd and the millions watching around the world on TV.  

Raised vegetarian, Billie Eilish decided to go vegan in 2014 at the age of thirteen after fully learning about the cruelties of the meat and dairy industries.

“Once you know that kind of thing and you see it, it's really hard to go back”, Eilish told British Vogue in 2021.

For the 2021 Oscars ceremony, Billie agreed to wear an Oscar de la Renta dress on one condition - that the fashion label agreed to end its use of fur. They agreed!

Former Cheers star Woody Harrelson is often one of the first names that come to mind when you think “vegan celeb.” The sixty-year-old actor who eats a mostly raw plant-based diet has been a prominent animal rights and environmental activist for over thirty years.

Touching on his vegan and cruelty-free way of life, Harrelson said: “Becoming vegan was the biggest change I ever made in my life, and one of the greatest accomplishments as well.” 

PETA’s 2016 Person of the Year Pamela Anderson has proudly used her voice in Hollywood via film, TV, magazines and social media to campaign for animals rights, often using controversial tactics.

In 2010, Anderson posed for a risqué PETA poster. Wearing just a skimpy bikini, the Baywatch star’s body was divided into sections such as “breast”, “rump”, “ribs”, and “shoulder”, alongside the heading: “All Animals Have the Same Parts.”

A vegetarian since her teens, the actress has been living fully plant-based for over thirty years.

Comedian, actor, and podcast host Russell Brand decided to go vegetarian at the tender age of fourteen before transitioning to a vegan lifestyle many years later in 2017. With a YouTube following of more than 5M, Brand speaks candidly on topics close to his heart such as spirituality, politics, advice for new vegans, and the reasons why one should adopt a plant-based lifestyle.

In a 2022 post on the vegan food industry, The Forgetting Sarah Marshall star proclaimed: “A lot of my reasons for veganism are based on being kind to animals… I’ve always loved animals… But there is a health component to it.”

Spiderman 1, 2 and 3 actor Tobey Maguire turned vegetarian way back in 1992 before choosing veganism in 2012. 

The former “PETA’s World’s Sexiest Vegetarian 2002” told Parade Magazine: “I don’t judge people who eat meat - that’s not for me to say - but the whole thing just sort of bums me out.”

Maguire also apparently refused the use of a Mercedes-Benz with leather interior loaned to him during the filming of The Great Gatsby and instead asked for one with faux leather. Go, Tobey!

A pioneer among plant-based celebs, Clueless star Alicia Silverstone has been a confirmed vegan since attending an animal rights meeting back in 1998.

As told to InStyle Home in 2007 after looking at her dog she thought: “I realized that I was the problem ... I was an animal lover who was eating animals.” 

Silverstone is so passionate about animal welfare she even posed nude for a PETA anti-wool advertisement in 2016.

Star Wars and Leon actress Natalie Portman became a strict vegetarian at just eight years old after witnessing the use of lasers on a chicken at a medical conference she attended with her dad. Portman’s big push towards veganism came after reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. 

“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 learned.

A celebrated veteran of stage, cinema, and television, James Cromwell is a prominent Hollywood vegan and advocate for animals rights. 

A vegetarian since the seventies, Cromwell revealed that his work alongside real-life animals in 1995’s Babe was the turning point: “I cared about their welfare and then, of course, you have lunch and it’s all there in front of you. I thought I should go the whole hog, so to speak.”

The L.A. Confidential and Succession star has protested passionately for animal and environmental causes over the years leading to more than one arrest!

An owner of shares in plant-based meat pioneers taking the world by storm Beyond Meat, actress Jessica Chastain has been vegan for more than 16 years and was vegetarian for 15 years prior to that.

As told to W Magazine in 2017, the Molly’s Game star said: “I found myself going to Veganism because a friend of mine had a two-week vegan food delivery program she wasn’t going to use so I used it, and immediately I just had more energy than I’ve ever had in my life.” 

Image credits for Jessica Chastain, Joaquin Phoenix 1 and 2, Billie Eilish, Woody Harrelson, Pamela Anderson, Russell Brand, Tobey Maguire, Alicia Silverstone, Natalie Portman, James Cromwell.