Acting Up in Asia

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Bill Murray's character in Lost in Translation traveled to Asia to make moola doing whiskey ads. No wonder he was so unhappy: he left behind his cause. Post-Richard Gere, entertainment figures have zeroed in on just about every injustice on the continent, and hardly a week goes by without a high-profile visit or statement of outrage. Over the weekend, one of the original bad girls of rock, the Pretenders' lead singer and vegetarian Chrissie Hynde, was scheduled to make an appearance at a Bangkok outlet of KFC—accompanied by a protester in a giant chicken suit—to tell Thais that eating drumsticks is bad for both man and bird. Hynde, in town for a concert, is but the latest in a trail of glamorous activists.

Melanie Griffith for the girls of Calcutta
The Working Girl star has raised millions of dollars for female orphans in India's teeming city, and cut a benefit all-star CD in 2002, Voices of Hope, with Penelope Cruz, Bob Dylan, Sting, Alanis Morissette, Ricky Martin, Antonio Banderas, Elton John, Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo.

Minnie Driver for Southeast Asia's garment workers
The star of the movie Good Will Hunting visited Cambodia and Thailand last month to highlight their plight, visiting factories and hosting a fashion show featuring the workers as models.

Celeste Holm for Falun Gong
In 2002, the Academy Award-winning actress (for 1947's Gentleman's Agreement) organized a petition calling for the release from a Chinese prison of her acupuncturist, Dr. Teng Chuyan, a member of the Falun Gong spiritual group. "The only choice for a practitioner [of Falun Gong] given by the Chinese government," Holm wrote, "is between death or living-death."

Bono for Aung San Suu Kyi
The U2 frontman wrote the lyrics for the group's 2000 hit Walk On for the detained Burmese democracy activist. Sample: "You could have flown away/ A singing bird in an open cage/ Who will only fly for freedom... " Burma banned the album.

Beastie Boys for Tibet
Move over Richard: the hip-hop trio set up the Milarepa Fund a decade ago to support "the Tibetan people's nonviolent struggle to regain independence." Since then, the boys have organized more than 10 Tibetan Freedom concerts around the world.

Angelina Jolie for Cambodia's forests
The Tomb Raider actress is donating 300 cows to impoverished farmers to wean them off logging and hunting. Two years ago, Jolie adopted a baby boy from a Cambodian orphanage.