The Surprising Female Celebrities Changing The World

When it comes to inspirational women who’ve made a huge impact on our world the likes of Greta Thunberg, Dame Jane Goodall and Angelina Jolie immediately spring to mind. 

Even celebrities including veteran militant actress Jane Fonda, who at 83 is using TikTok to educate younger generations on climate change, women’s rights activist and movie star Emma Watson and eco-designer Stella McCartney are constantly praised – and rightly so! – for doing their bit for planet Earth. 

But there is a growing list of diverse global superstars you might be surprised to hear are using their fame for good. Here, to celebrate International Women’s Day, we at The Ethicalist honour five celebrities who don’t get enough praise for the work they’re doing in the background that’s changing our world for the better.  

Miley Cyrus 

While many of us first knew her as the star of Hannah Montana – how did a blonde wig stop anyone guessing her real identity? – or for the headlines around her marriage breakup to Liam Hemsworth and subsequent romances, Miley, now 32, is far more than just one of the celebrities used as showbiz gossip fodder.

The singer and actress is a keen activist, speaking up at every opportunity for everything from veterans to vegans. She adopted a vegan diet because of her love of animals back in 2014 and even though she revealed she’d started eating fish again seven years later – because, she said her brain wasn’t functioning properly over a lack of omega-3s – she’s still eating a mainly plant-based diet and doing everything she can to support the vulnerable and the environment.

‘We’ve been doing the same thing to the Earth that we do to women,’ she told Elle. ‘We just take and take and expect it to keep producing. And it’s exhausted. It can’t produce.’ That’s why when was still married to actor Liam the couple decided not to have children. ‘We don’t want to reproduce because we know the Earth can’t handle it,’ she said at the time. ‘Until I feel like my kid would live on an earth with fish in the water, I’m not bringing in another person to deal with that.’ 

The Wrecking Ball singer, who is one of the biggest recording artists and celebrities in the world, set up the Happy Hippie Foundation in 2014 – now part of her eponymous Miley Cyrus Foundation – to provide education, employment and support to the homeless and vulnerable young people. ‘Starting Happy Hippie, and it still being around, has been the proudest moment of my career,’ she told Forbes.  

Shailene Woodley

Always an environmental activist, The Divergent star co-founded a nonprofit organisation All It Takes to encourage young people to foster ‘sustainable change for themselves, others and the planet’ when she was just 18, and has even been arrested for her beliefs. 

The 33-year-old American actress travelled to North Dakota to protest against a pipeline that would have carried crude oil through communities, tribal lands and wildlife habits, and stood with the local indigenous people fighting to keep their water clean. She was arrested for her involvement – but was happy to continue protesting.  

‘When the Dakota Access Pipeline breaks (and we know that too many pipelines do), millions of people will have crude-oil-contaminated water,’ she wrote in an essay for Time. ‘I know it is easy to be apathetic or detached from the reality that fossil fuel contamination could actually affect you and the ones you love. But hear me loud and clear: if you are a human who requires water to survive, then this issue directly involves you.

‘Don’t let the automatic sink faucets in your homes fool you — that water comes from somewhere, and the second its source is contaminated, so is your bathtub, and your sink, and your drinking liquid.’ 

Shailene became an Oceans Ambassador for Greenpeace in 2019, embarking on an expedition to the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic Ocean to study the impact of plastics and microplastic on marine life there, and called upon the UN for a new global ocean treaty that was agreed at the United Nations. The UN Ocean Treaty’s target is to protect 30 per cent of the world’s oceans by 2030.  

She has also campaigned against deforestation with Conservation Intl and partnered with a B Corp company Karün to create high-quality eyewear using recycled waste such as fishing nets, ropes, and metals.  

The Big Little Lies actress also forages for her own food, sources her own water, makes cheese, creates her own cosmetics and is vocal about reusing and recycling as much as possible.

Dolly Parton 

The country music star has long campaigned for literacy among children and donated money to help victims of wildfires, bald eagles and even vaccine research after the Covid pandemic global outbreak.

Dolly created The Dollywood Foundation in Tennessee, US, back in 1988 to help high school graduates and decrease the dropout rate. She then started the Buddy Program, which gave $500 to every seventh and eighth grader who finished high school – meaning the dropout rate went from 35 per cent down to six.

Now on a roll, in 1995 she opened Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to give every child under the age of five a book each month ‘so no child is left without a book to read’ ­­– a programme still going strong today.  

The 79-year-old has helped victims of flooding, donated money from ticket sales and put on benefit concerts to help various causes and donated some of the royalties from Whitney Houston’s cover of her song I Will Always Love You to give back to a poor neighbourhood in Nashville. 

The Grammy winner donated $1 million to fund a vaccine in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic and celebrated getting vaccinated with a remixed version of her hit song Jolene. 

‘If I can just do my small part in this world then that’s all I ask,’ she’s said of her philanthropy. ‘I am very proud of the Imagination Library, so that is very dear to me. I just hope that I can continue to do good things.’

Billie Eilish

Growing up in a solar-powered, water-conscious home where wrapping paper was reused and never thrown away, it was inevitable that Billie Eilish would become a sustainable superstar. And her mother, Maggie Baird, even made sure the teenage pop singer signed to the right record label by grilling executives on their eco-credentials at meetings.

This even led to teaming up with REVERB’s Music Carbonization Project, which aims to make the music industry sustainable, and Billie ensures that she ‘greens’ her concerts, using solar-charged batteries to power festival sets, and engages with fans to make them aware of climate issues. She banned plastic straws and asked fans to bring their own water bottles to her 2020 world tour and recycled everything else. 

Growing up vegetarian, the Ocean Eyes singer became vegan and has redesigned Nike’s Air Force 1 with vegan materials and starred in Gucci’s first ever campaign with a plant-based bag. She even created her own vegan perfume, Eilish.

Billie, 23, has marched with Greta Thunberg, made an environmental film with director Yassa Khan Overheated: A Climate Change Documentary and hosted a six-day climate action event, bringing together pop stars, celebrities, activists and fashion designs to spotlight the climate crisis. 

Her music also contains messages to care for people and the planet. All The Good Girls Go To Hell was all about climate collapse. Beneath the video she wrote: ‘Our earth is warming up at an unprecedented rate, icecaps are melting, our oceans are rising, our wildlife is being poisoned and our forests are burning.’ 

Olivia Wilde

The actress and Don’t Worry Darling director Olivia Wilde believes in making ‘sustainability sexy’ which, she says, means an emphasis on reducing plastic waste, mindful consumption and using eco-conscious brands. 

So committed is she that Olivia co-founded Conscious Commerce with a friend to support ethical brands and is often seen wearing or endorsing the products the company backs. Collaborations so far include thredUP, an America pre-loved fashion website, Anthroplogie for who she designed a dress and True Botanicals, an all-natural, sustainable sourced Californian skincare line. 

She starred in a campaign to celebrate her fifth anniversary as chief brand activist determined to stamp out the idea that conscious beauty can’t be luxurious. ‘Sustainability is sexy,’ she insisted. 

‘We need to dig deep to reconstruct the cliché surrounding sustainability in skincare and allow people to understand that they can indulge in skincare and feel like they are treating themselves, even if it’s something that’s actually very good for the environment.’

Olivia, 40, hosted a dinner for celebrities and thought leaders in partnership with Audi to talk about sustainability where guest celebrities were transported in electric cars and dined on vegan food. She even came under fire when she weighed in on Taylor Swift’s romance with American football star Travis Kelce on social media, posting: ‘I wish she was in love with a climate scientist.’ 

The outspoken star urges us all to shop mindfully – she loves wearing vintage – and says we should all see ‘sustainability as cool, sexy, chic, and innovative—not a crunchy duty.’