Actress Combines Art and Activism.docVIP

Actress Combines Art and Activism Nancy Greenleese | Rome, Italy 22 November 2010 Photo: ?FAO/Giulio Napolitano Actress Susan Sarandon is nominated as a new FAO Goodwill Ambassador at the World Food Day Ceremony in Rome, Italy. (October 2010) Actress Susan Sarandon never has shied away from a challenge. Shes played a witch, nun, dying mother, drunken grandmother, a fugitive and even herself on the television show, The Simpsons.Theres another role that shes taken on for decades and has no plans to give up: activist. The 64-year-old has said that at the root of both acting and activism is imagination. Shes able to imagine herself in someone elses shoes - and wants to use her fame to help them.Early years Susan Sarandon - the activist - arrived on center stage before the actress. The former Susan Tomalin was studying drama at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. at the start of a turbulent era. You know, I just came of age at a time when, if you had any brain at all, the end of 60s, beginning of the 70s, they stopped, we stopped a war. You had sex drugs and rock and roll but you were also in the streets and it made a difference, she says. Theres no one else in my family that has this problem. Im the only one. Sarandon grew up the eldest of nine children, sleeping in bunk beds in a crowded but happy house in Edison, New Jersey. Her father was a big band singer before becoming an advertising executive, and was often belting out tunes. She was barred from singing due to a voice that her father deemed terrible. Yet in 1975, in one of her first big roles, Sarandon acted and sang as Janet, a good girl gone bad, in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Orion The movie Bull Durham was a turning point in Susan Sarandons career, catapulting her into Hollywoods major leagues. Gaining groundSarandon kept honing her craft, becoming an art-house favorite. Louis Malles Atlantic City in 1980 earned her an Academy Award nomination. At that point, her