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Vegan actor Alan Cumming has appeared naked in a new campaign for animal rights organization PETA.
The Spy Kids and Eyes Wide Shut star, 58, posed with just a lettuce at New York City vegan restaurant Ladybird. Cumming, who hails from Scotland in the UK, later joked: “I think it’s the first time I’ve been naked in an East Village restaurant.”
The campaign features the words “I am the vegan option,” alongside messaging urging the public to “join me.” It’s currently being displayed on taxicabs around NYC.
In a video for the new advert, Cumming said: “If someone is questioning being vegan, I would say to them, ‘Don’t be ridiculous – just do it. It’s much, much easier than you think. We’re not living in the dark ages anymore. You can totally function.’”
Alan Cumming’s vegan advocacy
Cumming has been vegan since 2012, and has a long history of animal advocacy. In 2018, he leant his support to a PETA anti-dairy campaign. Donning a t-shirt with the words “Not a Dairy Queen” (in reference to the US ice cream chain), he urged the public to rethink their consumption of milk and cheese. His image appeared on flyers, which were handed out at Pride events in the UK.
Earlier this year, he, alongside Succession star Brian Cox, signed Compassion In World Farming’s Vision for Fair Food and Farming. The vision outlined plans to achieve achieve farming policies that “respect and protect the interests of people, animals, and the planet.”
“There is something wrong with our world when millions of people go hungry every day, yet there is more than enough food to go round,” he said in a statement at the time. “Our food and farming systems are harmful to our health, that of the planet and are the cause of enormous animal cruelty.”
Cumming has also previously urged the United Nations Climate Change Conferences to serve plant-based food. The COP summits have repeatedly sparked backlash for offering guests environmentally damaging animal products. Ahead of the 2021 event in Glasgow, he said serving meat was “irresponsible,” and likened it to “serving beer at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.”
“If the goal of COP26 is to protect the planet – as well as promote compassionate, responsible behavior – animal-derived foods have no place on the menu,” he said at the time.
Celebrity PETA campaigns
Cumming is one of a number of high profile celebrities to star in campaigns for PETA. The animal organization has long recruited famous faces for its shoots, and celebrities often appear without clothes in these.
In January of this year, vegan actor Alicia Silverstone posed naked to highlight the cruelty of leather. “I never, ever get naked in TV, in film, nothing, but I’ve done it for PETA because that’s how much it matters to me,” she said at the time. “If it takes me getting naked for you to care about animals then that is what I’m after.”
