Completely abandoning meat and dairy products sounds hard, although it probably would help if you’re a rich celebrity who can afford expensive restaurants, personal chefs, and special delivery services. Today, we have many celebrity vegans who are more than just vegetarians and live vegan. They look so good doing it that we wonder if it’s not worth it to live an equally limited culinary life.
Below are 9 celebrity vegans you probably didn’t know who have tried their hand at a vegan diet – many of them inspired by movies and books. While not every one of them is stuck with it, some are at least vegetarians.
Lea Michele
In an interview, Glee star Lea Michele jokingly once commented that people think she only eats grass, while she has found many tasty vegan dishes. In fact, her mom makes her a vegan version of her famous lasagna, so that Lea can still have her favorite meal. However, as with many celebrities, Lea doesn’t stick to a strict vegan diet all the time.
She said in an interview in 2012, “I switch vegan and non-vegan food. What I do is I like to try a lot of different things. I believe you have to be mindful of what your body is requesting and what it’s telling you regarding food. I was vegan for two years.”
She continued, “Anything related to vegan or vegetarian eating demands a lot of effort. You have to do what you feel is best for yourself and you believe in and what your body is telling you it needs. I honestly think that everyone should do what’s best for them and what’s best for me may not be best for someone else. But like I said, you gotta just do what makes you feel good.” Stay tuned for more celebrity vegans.
Russell Brand
The British Russell Brand has been a vegetarian since he was 14 years old and PETA even elected him the “World’s Sexiest Vegetarian” in 2007. Following this, Russell decided to go one step ahead and decided to go entirely vegan after watching the documentary “Fork Not Scalpel” in 2011. “I’m now vegan, goodbye eggs, hello Ellen,” he wrote on Twitter at the time.
He once said in an interview, “Even as a junkie, I stayed true – I used heroin but didn’t eat hamburgers. Paradoxical, but sexy.” Russell has been eating lots of raw vegetables and tofu and is spending a lot of time doing yoga and meditation. However, he didn’t always stick quite strictly to a vegan diet.
Bill Clinton
Chances are you’re quite surprised to hear that former United States President Bill Clinton is also a vegan. It was in 2010, during his daughter Chelsea’s wedding, that he shocked everyone with a weight loss of 20 kilos and a totally different look. For health reasons, Clinton changed his diet.
In 2004 he had a quadruple bypass and in 2010 he underwent emergency surgery for vascular prostheses when one of his veins stopped working. Subsequently, Clinton reportedly read three books on vegan nutrition, Dr Dean Ornish’s “Program for Reversing Heart Disease,” “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease” by Dr Caldwell Esselstyn and “The China Study” by biochemist Dr T. Colin Campbell.
“I just came to the realization that I was a high-risk patient, and I wasn’t going to mess around with it anymore. And I was still going to be a grandfather,” he said. “So I made the decision to go with the diet that I thought would guarantee the longest life.” Stay tuned for more celebrity vegans.
Alicia Silverstone
A Hollywood’s flagship vegan, Alicia Silverstone never minces words and changed her diet following a visit to an animal rights seminar in 1998. She has since published two best-selling books on vegan living, namely The Kind Diet (2009), alongside its companion website The Kind Life, and The Kind Mama (2014), which covers raising children vegan. She said in 2014 that she was planning to write a third book, The Kind Cookbook.
Looking at Alicia, you can hardly believe she’s 38 – and in an interview the other year, she claimed it was all because of her vegan diet.
“For me, I simply couldn’t balance fighting for animals and then eating them at the same time – it made no sense. However, I soon discovered that vegan eating also had unbelievable health benefits and started to educate myself on the health potential of a plant-based diet,” she explained. “Not very long after I started, I gave up my inhaler, had no more allergy shots, lost weight, had fewer mood swings and no acne, as well as seemed to literally shine from the inside out.”
Jared Leto
Just like many celebrities, Jared Leto claims that his vegan lifestyle is making him look much younger than his 49 years. He is also a big advocate of exercising, not drinking alcohol and getting plenty of sleep. “I have many more vices, but alcohol is not one of them,” Jared said in an interview.
“It really probably comes down to just sleep and diet. If you are constantly tearing or not getting much sleep, [your body] won’t last long, that’s for sure. I do live pretty healthy and I think that helps a lot. That’s how I’ve been living for quite a while. I have a vegetarian/vegan diet for 20 whole years and have lots of respect for my body. It definitely helps slow down aging, I think.”
He even remained vegan when he had to gain some serious muscle for his role as the Joker in the movie “Suicide Squad.” In fact, he eats small meals and snacks like vegan pancakes and tacos once every few hours. In light of the fact that many celebrities have given up their vegan diets, we’re definitely wowed! Stay tuned for more celebrity vegans.
Natalie Portman
The 40-year-old actress Natalie Portman has been a vegetarian since her childhood, but she turned vegan after she read Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Eating Animals, one that changed her from a “twenty-year-old vegetarian into a vegan campaigner”. However, she is not quite as rigid as Alicia.
She allowed herself to eat dairy again once she got pregnant, Natalie said. “I became vegetarian again while I was pregnant because I simply felt that I wanted that stuff,” she said in an interview. “I was told that my body was in need of eggs and dairy and all of that. I understand that there are people who stay vegan. Still, I think you just need to be careful, watch your iron and B12 levels, and if need be, take supplements if you’re lacking those things.”
Tobey Maguire
Spiderman also has a vegan diet. Since 1992, Tobey Maguire has been a vegetarian, but he decided in 2009 to go strictly vegan. He indicated in an interview in 2008 that not eating meat was never really difficult for him: “It was never that difficult for me. I was never craving to eat meat. Actually, as a kid, I didn’t think it was easy to eat meat at all.”
In addition, since he was 19, he has not consumed any mind-altering substances – not even alcohol. According to a 2013 interview with the Guardian, however, for him, eating healthy is a little harder than giving up martinis. “I’m a vegan,” he said. “Maybe I do eat a little too much sugar and wheat, but I’m always trying to improve.” Stay tuned for more celebrity vegans.
Jennifer Lopez
As with Jared Leto, Jennifer Lopez also seems not to age. The singer, dancer and actress looks better than ever at 52 – and she credits that, at least in part, to her diet.
In fact, she tried a 22-day vegan trial, the same one that Beyonce and Jay-Z went on, and said in an interview, “I gave this vegan 22-day plan a try it was really good and I kept going with it for a couple of weeks and now I eat a little bit of fish from time to time. But I must admit that I like it. I like eating that way. [Before] it just wasn’t like that. You know, and I didn’t know how good you can feel when you eat healthily.”
Jennifer also works out a lot, but if it was the vegan diet that got her in shape for her “Booty” music video, it’s not hard to see why people are following her on it. About the same time as Jennifer, Jessica Simpson gave vegan a try and successfully lost weight for her wedding. Stay tuned for more celebrity vegans.
Ellen Degeneres
In 2008, the talk show celebrity and comedian Ellen DeGeneres declared that she would go vegan. Motivated by books like Diet For A New America, Skinny Bitch, the movie Earthling, and the need to get rid of the tension that she believed came from the negative energy in animal products.
She said in another interview, however, that she has been eating eggs from her neighbor who keeps chickens. “We actually get our eggs from those chickens because they’re happy,” she explained – causing many strict vegans to be shocked. Ellen, nevertheless, still keeps to a restricted diet, along with her wife Portia de Rossi.
In case you know any other celebrity vegans that are not in our list, let us know in the comments so we can add them to the list.
