Famous Vegans - Ellen DeGeneres

Ellen DeGeneres, 2011

Ellen DeGeneres

Born Ellen Lee DeGeneres on January 26, 1958. She's an American stand-up comedienne, television host, author and actress. She hosts the talk show The Ellen DeGeneres Show, was a judge on the ninth season of American Idol and has hosted both the Academy Awards and the Primetime Emmys. She has won thirteen Emmys and many other awards for her work and charitable efforts. In November 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton named her a Special Envoy for Global Aids Awareness.

She appeared in the television sitcoms Ellen and The Ellen Show and had a lead role in the movie Mr. Wrong. She also provided the voice of Dory in the animated film Finding Nemo, for which she was awarded a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress. She is the author of the books The Funny Thing Is..., My Point...And I Do Have One and Seriously...I'm Kidding.

Ellen is married to Portia de Rossi, who is also vegan. Together they adopted two cows - Holy and Madonna - from The Gentle Barn, a farm animal sanctuary with an at-risk program that works by uniting inner city kids and at-risk youth with rescued animals. Ellen has a website called Going Vegan with Ellen.

Quotes by Ellen DeGeneres:

After reading Diet for a New America, she became vegetarian, but went back to eating meat about 8 months later.

"I used to love cheeseburgers and steak and I just did what most people do, I just had a disconnect. I just decided: it's more important for me to taste a cheeseburger, and have a steak or have a turkey sandwich. And it's easier and I just put it out of my mind."

In 2008 she went vegan. She explains how she made that decision:

"I read Skinny Bitch first and then I forced myself to watch a documentary called Earthlings. It's inside footage of factory farms and dairy farms. And you just see that and you go 'I can't participate in that, I can't be a part of something that is suffering'."

"50 billion animals a year are killed and I think we all fool ourselves that there is some kind of happy cow and that it's a quick death, that they just hit him in the head and that they are out. They are all in pain, they are all treated badly. They are all diseased and they are all pumped with antibiotics. It's a very disturbing reality. And it happens every minute of the day."

"I do it because I love animals and I saw the reality. And I just couldn't ignore it anymore."

"I'm healthier for it, I'm happier for it. I can't imagine that if you're putting something in your body that is filled with fear or anxiety or pain, that that isn't somehow going to be inside of you."

"I'm not an activist; I don't look for controversy. I'm not a political person, but I'm a person with compassion. I care passionately about equal rights. I care about human rights. I care about animal rights. Above all, I strive to be the best I can — to be better than I was yesterday and better tomorrow."

"I want everybody to be happier. I would love for the world to be happier. I think it’s our one thing that we all share. We focus so much on our differences and that is creating, I think, a lot of chaos and negativity and bullying in the world. And I think if everybody focused on what we all have in common — which is– we all want to be happy."

Quotes are from her 2010 interview with Katie Couric for CBS News, her 2009 interview with Oprah, her 2011 interview with Good Housekeeping and her 2011 interview with Ann Curry on the Today Show.