25 Female Celebrities Who Use Their Power For Good
Celebrities — and, more specifically, female celebrities — have long been derided for speaking up about the causes they care about. The need for “political celebrities” to “stick to what they know” is, after all, a phrase that’s been heard at many a conservative-leaning dinner table. Thankfully, it’s also an idea that countless women celebrities have roundly ignored — and the world is all the better for it.
Nowadays, the line between female celebrities and famous activists can feel increasingly blurred. From Black Lives Matter and #MeToo to climate change activism, celebs have been occupying meaningful roles within movements, if only to lend their finances and support while passing the mic to communities that lack their platform. Below, we’ve rounded up 25 celebrities that fight for a cause (or a few) in a way that’s generated real impact. While we may know and love them for their musical talent or their star power on screen, these female celebrities are also timeless examples of the good that can come from speaking up and causing, in the words of civil rights activist John Lewis, good trouble.
Getty Images1/26Nina Simone
The iconic singer is sometimes called “The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement,” and for good reason; many of her songs perfectly capture the tumult of the ‘60s. She wrote “Mississippi Goddam” as a response to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four young Black girls. Its lyrics: “You don’t have to live next to me/just give me my equality!” The song was banned in a handful of Southern states and many of the records sent to radio stations were returned destroyed. Simone’s song “Young, Gifted, and Black” also became one of the movement’s key anthems.
Getty Images2/26Audrey Hepburn
When she was a child during WWII, Hepburn and her family depended on charities for food and medicine. After she retired from the movie business, Hepburn became a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF and it became her primary focus; she raised money, visited countless countries, and continued to work for the foundation while battling cancer. Starting with her first UNICEF mission to an Ethiopian orphanage, Hepburn remained most dedicated to helping vulnerable children. Between the years 1988 and 1992, she auctioned off most of her famous film costumes in order to bring clean water, food, and medicine to children around the world.
Getty Images3/26Angelina Jolie
What hasn’t Jolie done? Her dedication to charity work has become her true passion. Jolie began working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the early ‘00s and, since then, has visited countless war-torn countries across over 60 field missions to help refugees find safe spaces. In 2012, she was appointed Special Envoy to the UNHCR, expanding her advocacy work to the diplomatic level. That same year, she co-launched the Preventing Sexual Violence In Conflict Initiative, which works to, among other things, end impunity for war-zone sexual violence across the globe while providing resources and healthcare to survivors.
Getty Images for March of Dimes4/26Jennifer Lopez
J.Lo and her sisters started the Lopez Family Foundation in 2009 to help deliver accessible, quality healthcare to mothers and their children, regardless of their ability to pay for care. In addition to her work for the Foundation, Lopez has solidified her reputation as a famous feminist through her work with Amnesty International. After learning about the high rate of femicide in Mexico, she teamed up with the organization to launch an awareness-raising bilingual website. Lopez also produced and starred in a film, “Borderland,” dedicated to exposing the ongoing murders of women activists in Juarez, Mexico, and in 2015, the UN Foundation named Lopez a Global Advocate for Girls and Women.
FilmMagic5/26Viola Davis
The How to Get Away with Murder actress has been vocal about her own childhood as one of more than 15 million kids in the U.S. facing hunger daily. As an ambassador for Hunger Is, a charity that aims to fight childhood hunger, and as a National Spokesperson for No Kid Hungry, Davis has been working to spread awareness about the impact of pandemic-fueled food insecurity on children. As she told No Kid Hungry: “The uncertainty of where your next meal will come from is a scary thing and it consumes every waking moment you have. I still remember what it was like—the stigma attached to it and the shame. That’s what so many families are going through right now.”
Getty Images6/26Dolly Parton
Having grown up poor in the hills of Tennessee, Parton is now one of the region’s — as well as the nation’s — most famous philanthropists. In 1988, she established the Dollywood Foundation with the goal of helping impoverished Appalachian children find academic success; the year the program launched, the high school drop-out rate in her home county went down by 29%, speaking to the foundation’s impact. Parton’s education-based activism later morphed into her Imagination Library, an organization responsible for distributing free books to kids across the country. Today, Parton & Co. ship more than a million books to 1.3 million kids each month.
2015 Getty Images7/26Miley Cyrus
Dolly’s goddaughter Miley has a cause near and dear to her heart, too. Her Happy Hippie Foundation seeks to “fight injustice facing homeless youth, LGBTQ youth, and other vulnerable populations.” Miley has used her visibility and voice to raise awareness, most notably by bringing a date who was experiencing homelessness to the 2014 VMAs and with her super-viral Backyard Sessions videos featuring musician friends like Ariana Grande. (Both Miley and Ariana have lent their famous faces to MAC’s Viva Glam campaign, too, which donates 100% of its proceeds to support women and girls, the LGBTQ+ community, and people affected by HIV/AIDS.
AFP/Getty Images8/26Elizabeth Taylor
After losing her dear friend Rock Hudson to AIDS when the disease was still very new and thought of as scary by the general public, Elizabeth Taylor decided to do something about it. For the rest of her life, she worked tirelessly to raise awareness and money for AIDS research and care, co-founding amFAR in 1985 and founding the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS foundation in 1991. When the legendary movie star died, she made sure her foundation would thrive. Twenty-five percent of her image rights go to the foundation, so whenever you buy something with her gorgeous face on it, you’re supporting her cause.
AFP/Getty Images9/26Oprah
No list of celebrities that fight for a cause would be complete without Oprah on it. From providing disaster relief and addressing homelessness to helping finance the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History, philanthropy has been the true bedrock of Oprah’s career. Education, in particular, is a cause that’s near to her heart. By 2012, it was estimated she’d donated about $400 million to educational causes, including the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa, as well as hundreds of scholarships to Morehouse College, an HBCU in Atlanta. In 2013, her philanthropy work even earned her the highest award a U.S. civilian can get, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Getty Images10/26Lady Gaga
Gaga and her mother founded the Born This Way Foundation in 2012 to help support young people and make the world a kinder place by powering conversations around mental health. She was also the face of MAC’s Viva Glam Gaga lipstick in 2010, for which all proceeds went directly to the MAC AIDS fund to support those living with HIV/AIDS. Gaga also wrote her Oscar-nominated song "Til It Happens To You" for the documentary The Hunting Ground, which spotlights the campus rape epidemic. She's been outspoken about her own sexual assault, and even brought 50 survivors up on stage with her when she performed at the 2016 Academy Awards.
AFP/Getty Images11/26Beyoncé
For celebrity causes that have generated real impact, one need look no further than Beyoncé’s BeyGOOD foundation. In the past couple of years alone, BeyGOOD has donated $6 million in mental health services and more to families impacted by the pandemic, with an additional half a million given to help families avoid eviction. Well before COVID, though, housing insecurity is something Beyoncé worked to address. In her hometown of Houston, she donated $7 million to build Knowles-Temenos Place Apartments, a housing complex offering living space for dozens of displaced individuals. She’s also given frequently to the Black Lives Matter movement, too; both Beyoncé and Jay-Z donated huge sums of money to jailed protestors in Baltimore and Ferguson, where they additionally lent support by attending protests and meeting with victims’ families.
Getty Images12/26Emma Watson
Once she left Hermione Granger behind, Emma Watson changed direction, becoming a United Nations Women Goodwill Ambassador and vocal advocate behind the #HeforShe campaign’s push for male allyship. Watson has also been a voice in the global fight for reproductive justice, drawing attention to the death of an Irish woman that could’ve been avoided had it not been for the nation’s restrictive abortion laws. And, as an environmental activist, she’s a constant champion of sustainable fashion, having pledged to wear only 100% eco-friendly and ethically made clothing.
- Matt Winkelmeyer13/26
MJ Rodriguez
“We haven’t shattered that glass ceiling yet… but it’s cracked! It’s cracked, so that means there is some work being done,” MJ Rodriguez said on the NBC special “TransAmerica.” Rodriguez, the first out trans woman to receive an outstanding lead actress nomination at the Emmys, as well as the first out trans performer to be nominated in any lead acting category, is doing some of that work herself. Named 2021’s Person of the Year by The Advocate, whether on screen as Blanca in “Pose” or in her burgeoning music career, Rodriguez is known for choosing projects that powerfully center the trans experience, as well as the Afro-Latina experience. "I'm not going to stop," she’s said. "I'm going to make sure that the door is constantly kept open. I'm going to put a little stopper in that door, so that it can open up as much as it can."
Getty Images for Joyful Heart Fo14/26Mariska Hargitay
Detective Olivia Benson and Law & Order: SVU had a profound effect on Mariska Hargitay. She was stunned by what she learned about sexual abuse while preparing for the role, and the fan letters she began to receive from rape survivors made her realize that many women hadn’t found a place to speak about their experiences and begin to heal. So, she founded the Joyful Heart Foundation to help “heal, educate and empower victims of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse,” as well as to advance and reform policies and legislation that impact survivors across the globe.
15/26Taylor Swift
Swift is well known both for surprising her fans and for finding new ways to share and distribute her earnings. From paying off people’s student loans to covering medical bills and rent, much of Swift’s altruism is intended to benefit struggling fans and their families directly. But she’s also given generously to a number of charitable organizations, too. The proceeds of her “Welcome to New York” single were donated to New York City schools, for instance, and she also donated $1 million to tornado relief efforts in Nashville in 2020.
- Dimitrios Kambouris16/26
Serena Williams
The tennis legend has long been an advocate for women, and especially for Black women. She’s campaigned against everything from unequal pay for female athletes to body-negative, sexist dress codes in tennis. But it was perhaps her own experience becoming a mother that catapulted Williams’ activism to new levels. After facing life-threatening complications following the birth of her daughter, an experience she penned a moving essay about, Williams became a primary investor in Mahmee, a health-tech company dedicated to identifying care gaps and ending the Black maternal mortality crisis in the U.S. In fact, Mahmee is one of multiple women-founded organizations that Williams backs; Serena Ventures, her venture capital fund, routinely invests in women-owned businesses.
- Caroline McCredie17/26
Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda has more than secured her spot as one of the most famous activists of the past century. During the 1960s, her political activism first found a foothold in the Civil Rights Movement, and next, within the anti-war movement that sprang up in opposition to the Vietnam War. In 1969, she supported the Indigenous occupation of Alcatraz Island, and in the early ‘70s, she was a firm supporter of the Black Panthers party. Not loved by all, Fonda’s activism earned her negative attention from the U.S. government; in 1970, she was arrested for “drug trafficking” upon returning to the U.S. from an anti-war tour. (What was actually in her bag at the time? Vitamins.) In 2019, at the tender age of 81, Fonda showed that The Man still couldn’t keep her down when she was arrested for a fifth time while protesting climate change.
- Stefanie Keenan18/26
America Ferrera
America Ferrera has long campaigned for the need for better, more representative roles for Latinx actors, saying of her own early acting experience: “The gang-banger's girlfriend, the sassy shoplifter, pregnant chola number two — these were the kinds of roles that existed for someone like me. Someone they looked at and saw as too brown, too fat, too poor, too unsophisticated.” Later, Ferrara’s fight for the Latinx community would extend beyond the gates of Hollywood. As a board member of the grassroots organization Voto Latino, she worked to educate and empower Latinx voters ahead of the 2008 presidential election, and in 2020, she did the same through her #SheSePuede campaign. Among women’s rights activists, Ferrera has also earned a name as one of the founders of Time’s Up, where she helped to draw awareness around the sexual harrassment and assault of blue-collar working women.
- Emma McIntyre19/26
Yara Shahidi
At the age of 17, before she herself was able to vote, Black-ish star Yara Shahidi was already galvanizing her peers to head to the polls through Eighteen x '18, her nonpartisan organization dedicated to registering and mobilizing young voters. Also as a teen, she started Yara’s Club in partnership with the Young Women’s Leadership Network of New York, working to equip girls from disadvantaged backgrounds with online mentorship. As she told Teen Vogue back in 2017: "I feel like activism has always been ingrained into who I am because of how my parents have raised me… I was always an outspoken child, but over the past few years, I've been able to say that I am comfortable—in any situation—voicing my opinion about how I feel, which is a fantastic way of vying for social change."
- Frazer Harrison20/26
Alicia Keys
When Alicia Keys was 8, she remembers the pain caused by her mother’s friend dying of HIV/AIDS. Decades later, she befriended AIDS activist Leigh Blake, and together, the pair visited South African clinics that housed HIV-positive mothers and children. That trip propelled them to found Keep a Child Alive; since 2003, the organization has been providing healthcare, housing and support to HIV/AIDs-affected communities around the world. But Keys’ activism hasn’t stopped there. In 2018, she launched a new nonprofit, She Is the Music, to increase women’s representation at all levels of the music industry.
- Tibrina Hobson21/26
Selena Gomez
Selena Gomez regularly uses her platform to campaign for change, from serving as co-chair of When We All Vote, a national, nonpartisan organization dedicated to increasing voter engagement, to handing over her Instagram to Black activists in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. Consistently, one area that Gomez has dedicated her platform to over the years is mental health. Through her Rare Impact Fund, Gomez is working toward a goal of raising $100 million over the next decade in mental health services, particularly for communities that struggle to access mental health care. The fund also partners with the Trevor Project on suicide intervention programs for LGBTQ+ young people.
- Rich Fury22/26
Mindy Kaling
Though Mindy Kaling has for years been an advocate for inclusion and representation in Hollywood, becoming a mother, she says, “shifted” her view toward social justice and activism: “I’m Indian, and to think of the millions of babies who look exactly like my daughter, who don’t have the same advantages that she does — it is very chilling to me, and it’s very personal to me now that I see her face every single morning.” Since then, the scope of her activism has increased, including through her partnership with Stella Artois and Water.org’s Pour It Forward campaign, which works to address the global drinking water crisis. For Kahling’s 40th birthday, a drinking water nonprofit was similarly among the 40 organizations she made donations to, with causes like The Nature Conservancy and End Rape on Campus also represented.
- Ethan Miller23/26
Cher
Since the 1960s, Cher has been a beloved feminist icon and humanitarian, speaking up (to often delightful effect on Twitter) about her favored causes. After starring in the movie Mask in 1985, Cher became a National Spokesperson and major financial backer of the Children’s Craniofacial Association, often inviting children with facial deformities to attend her concerts with backstage passes. Additionally, Cher has donated hundreds of thousands of bottles of clean drinking water to Flint, Michigan; is a donor to Keys’ Keep a Child Alive foundation; advocates regularly for animal welfare; and recently gave $1 million to found the CherCares Pandemic Resource and Response Initiative.
- Matt Winkelmeyer24/26
Laverne Cox
Laverne Cox has routinely been hailed as a high-profile trailblazer for her work fighting for transgender people’s rights and representation. Though she’s earned a number of “firsts” for the trans community — including becoming the first transgender cover star of Time magazine and the first transgender person to win a Primetime Emmy — she’s hardly content to stop at personal accolades. From successfully pushing for IMDB to change their birth name policy to advocating for the trans cast members of Pose to receive Emmy nominations, she’s worked to help advance other trans actors and artists. And outside of Hollywood, she’s regularly used her platform to call attention to everything from anti-trans laws and policies to ending violence against trans people, too.
- Vera Anderson25/26
Constance Wu
A vocal advocate for Asian-American representation in Hollywood, Constance Wu first rose to fame for her portrayal of Jessica Huang on Fresh Off the Boat, later turning her attention to hugely successful movies like Crazy Rich Asians and Hustlers. No stranger to using her voice to speak up for what’s right, Wu is known to encourage others to do the same. As part of her involvement with The Big Hundred, a nonpartisan campaign dedicated to promoting active, actionable civic engagement, Wu partnered with Miry’s List, an organization that supports newly arrived immigrant and refugee families in California. “I admire people with the courage to make an immigrant journey in search of peace, safety and well-being for their families,” she told Teen Vogue. “I want them to find that and I wanted to be active in my care."
