Angelina Jolie's new movie, "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider," might not be up to much, but I have a lot of respect for Jolie herself. On Sept. 10, at a Tokyo press conference to promote the film, the actress mentioned her new job as special ambassador for the U.N. High Commission for Refugees. She spent almost a year in Europe making "Tomb Raider" and found "that the news you get there is different from the news you get in the United States. There was a lot I didn't know about the world, and when I got back, I called up the United Nations to find out more."
The press conference took place the day before the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. Since then, it seems every major Hollywood star has been trying to outdo each other in donating money to American victims and their families. Julia Roberts sees Schwarzenegger's million and raises it another million. Jolie, on the other hand, gives her million to Afghan refugees, who, I daresay, need the money more.
Likewise, I've never been a fan of Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, the writer, actress and talk-show host who chatters like a duck and wears more makeup than the Folies Bergere. However, as an honorary UNICEF ambassador since 1984, Kuroyanagi has exploited her high profile to collect billions of yen in donations from the Japanese public, to feed and educate children throughout the developing world. Each year, Kuroyanagi takes a TV crew to a country devastated by famine or civil strife and subsequently plasters the Japanese media with videotapes and photos of starving, sick children and her own weeping countenance. It's shameless and, at times, even self-promoting, but it does the trick. People give money.