Are you resolved to go (or stay) vegan this year? Maybe a high-profile endorsement of the diet will help. Many well-known people follow a vegan diet and have expressed just how much it benefits their lives. Here are eight vegan celebrities who might inspire you to embrace the diet yourself.
1. Benedict Cumberbatch
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PETA named Benedict Cumberbatch one of its Most Beautiful Vegan Celebrities of 2018, a well-deserved title for the actor. The honor goes to “prominent vegan role models in Hollywood,” PETA says. And past winners have included Jared Leto, Jessica Chastain and Ellen Page.
Cumberbatch has mentioned his vegan diet in several interviews. Speaking with Time Out London for “Avengers: Infinity War,” the actor said his plant-based diet helped him stay in shape for his role as Dr. Strange. Plus, Cumberbatch often sports vegan clothing, showing he truly walks the walk.
2. Ava DuVernay
Cumberbatch shared his Most Beautiful Vegan Celebrity title with filmmaker Ava DuVernay, who recently directed “A Wrinkle in Time.” PETA highlighted one of DuVernay’s posts on Twitter, in which she pointed out that black veganism is a social justice issue.
DuVernay linked to a New York Times article about the black vegan movement. And she used her platform to call attention to this quote from a vegan chef: “For a lot of black people, it’s also the social justice and food access. The food we have been eating for decades and decades has been killing us.”
3. Natalie Portman
Actress Natalie Portman was a vegetarian since age 9 and became a vegan at age 30. She credits Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Eating Animals as her inspiration for finally committing to veganism, according to an interview she did with Vanity Fair.
“I think until then, I had thought, ‘Oh, with eggs and dairy, you’re not killing animals. It’s just their natural byproducts.’” she told Vanity Fair. “But when I started learning about the conditions — and the environmental effect of all these animals and the impact on humans of having large groups of sick animals together, it really made me want to change immediately.” For people who want to become vegan, she recommends making the change slowly, switching out foods one meal at a time.
4. Peter Dinklage
Actor Peter Dinklage — known for his role of Tyrion Lannister in “Game of Thrones” — has been a vegetarian since he was young and later went vegan. He is an active advocate for animals, working with PETA on a video about factory farming, serving as an ambassador for Cruelty Free International and more.
Ever the animal lover, Dinklage even asked fans to stop buying huskies just because they resemble “Game of Thrones” direwolves. This plea came because the number of abandoned huskies had risen dramatically since the show began its run.
5. Miley Cyrus
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It probably should come as no surprise that singer-actress Miley Cyrus speaks very candidly about her vegan lifestyle and promotes causes, including cruelty-free fashion. “If you choose to eat meat …. you love PETS not ANIMALS,” she once tweeted. But it actually was her pets who inspired her to make the diet change. During an appearance on “The Tonight Show,” Cyrus said the intelligence of her pets is what made it click for her that she didn’t want to eat any animals.
Cyrus and her husband, Liam Hemsworth, even had a completely vegan wedding. Hemsworth went vegan in 2015 and felt so much healthier that he even persuaded his brother Chris (Thor himself) to adopt the diet — proving plants can bulk up muscles just fine. “I have more energy, my sleeping is better, and I have more endurance in my workouts,” Hemsworth told Men’s Health in 2018.
6. Evanna Lynch
Actress Evanna Lynch, who played Luna Lovegood in the “Harry Potter” films, is an outspoken vegan. She has a podcast, The ChickPeeps, where she and friends discuss how they maintain their vegan lifestyle. Lynch also launched a cruelty-free beauty box and created a video with PETA in which she undergoes “animal testing” to draw awareness to the experiments animal suffer.
On her Instagram, Lynch recently wrote how she initially had trouble going vegan because “I thought my diet was defined by what I didn’t eat. … It made me miserable and resentful of veganism.” But she continued to try, motivated by her love of animals, and learned to focus on vegan additions rather than animal product subtractions. “You don’t have to give up anything,” she wrote. “You just have to research a bit and learn to substitute.”
7. Al Gore
Climate activist and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore announced in 2013 that he had switched to a vegan diet. “In a visceral way, I felt better, so I’ve continued with it. And I’m likely to continue it for the rest of my life,” he said in an interview with Medscape.
Interestingly, Gore’s running mate, former President Bill Clinton, had similar reasons for embracing a plant-based diet (though his doctor encourages him to occasionally eat fish). Clinton underwent quadruple-bypass surgery and a subsequent emergency surgery to insert a pair of stents. After that, he knew he had to make some diet changes. “I just decided that I was the high-risk person, and I didn’t want to fool with this anymore. And I wanted to live to be a grandfather,” he told AARP The Magazine in 2013.
8. Stevie Wonder
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Stevie Wonder became a vegan in 2014 and has expressed a lot of love for his new diet. “I’ve been a vegan for two years, so that’s helped my already good-looking self,” he joked in a 2016 interview with AOL. “I think that eating healthy is important.” He’s also motivated to make more sustainable choices for the planet, saying, “We can’t just talk about it, we have to be about it.”
Plus, Wonder couldn’t help but break into song about eating vegan when he appeared on James Corden’s “Carpool Karaoke” in 2015. And to Corden, Wonder put his reasons for the diet quite simply: “I like not eating meat.”
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