PETA Gala and Humanitarian Awards

PETA Gala and Humanitarian Awards - 2005-09-10

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Jorja Fox I’ve been a vegetarian since I was nineteen. I come from like a French-Canadian family who ate meat and potatoes every day, three times a day for my entire youth, and I used to tease the heck out of my friends that were vegetarians, and I had a lot of ’em, and then when I became a vegetarian I just decided that I was going to try and learn as much I could so that when people teased me, maybe I’d have a couple of things to say. So PETA very quickly in New York City was an organization that I’d heard about, and I read about, and I started going to rallies, and demonstrations, and protests. Um, and I’ve been a huge supporter and fan of ever since, y’know, you guys rock and I think, you know, you, you do it in such a sort of an alternatively exciting, and fresh, and, um, confrontational way, and that’s awesome.

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Jorja Fox Hi, I’m Jorja Fox, I’m an actor, I’m a guitar player, I’m a surfer, uh, I’m a sister and a daughter, and I am a vegetarian.

VegTV How long have you been involved with PETA?

Jorja Fox Well I’ve been a fan and supporter and rally-er from many many years, since I’ve been a vegetarian, so that’s like forty years ago, you know, fifty.

VegTV You haven’t been a vegetarian for forty years, you haven’t been on this planet for forty years. “(Jorja laughs)” How long have you been a vegetarian?

Jorja Fox Uh, you’re gonna laugh, um, I’d say six- eighteen years, yeah.

VegTV Most of your life.

Jorja Fox Yeah, yeah, since I was a teenager or so, there you go.

VegTV What was the epiphany, what, what was it made you become vegetarian?

Jorja Fox Y’know, it was a meatball sandwich in Brooklyn one afternoon and I don’t know what it was about it, but y’know I, those little moments, I had friends, and people I’d gone out with who were vegetarians and bands that I liked that were vegetarian, Morrisey’s here tonight, I’m very excited to see them, and uh, and it just kinda all came together over a meatball hero in Brooklyn one day and that was that. And then I was really that person who would tease those people quite a bit, you know, the type of person that’d be ‘oh, y’know, well vegetables are alive too and you’re killing vegetables if you eat them’, and so I decided to get as educated as I could, cause I, I, you know, didn’t want to get the same teasing back at me after I was a vegetarian, so I found PETA very quickly.

VegTV Would you do one of those ads for PETA, would you take off your clothes?

Jorja Fox Go naked? Maybe. I might, yeah. I haven’t been naked yet actually, so I might. I wouldn’t look good enough, but I’ll do it, yeah. “(laughs)”

VegTV Anything new, anything upcoming for you?

Jorja Fox Um, we got a bunch of CSI coming out, and it’s all very horrible, and there’s lots of dead people, and we’re excited. I have a little play I’m producing that’s going to London in March 2006.

VegTV What’s the play about?

Jorja Fox Uh, it’s the story, it’s actually based on a true story of a young woman from a small town in England that comes to America in the late sixties to follow her dreams, so it’s very, yeah, takes advantage of New York City in the early seventies; it’s a good story, lotta heart.

VegTV Anywhere we can follow that? Is it on the Internet?

Jorja Fox Uh, yeah, dearbernard.com, it’s on the Internet, it’s a full length original musical, so we’ll see. We put it up in L.A. last year, and we’re taking, slowly getting to London in March.

Transcription by David Masters