Monday, Mar. 19, 2012

Lucy Lawless

Born Lucille Frances Ryan, the Xena: Warrior Princess star must have been feeling clairvoyant when she chose her celebrity pseudonym. Lawless proved even she was not above the law when she was arrested along with several other Greenpeace activists following a four-day protest aboard a Shell oil drilling ship in her native New Zealand last February. The occupation was a protest of Arctic drilling, intended to keep the ship from traveling to the Chukchi Sea, off the coast of Alaska, to drill exploratory wells. Lawless said the protestors' exchanges with authorities were peaceful, but she remained fervent about the issue at hand. "We risk trashing whole ecosystems and poisoning them from plankton on up," she told reporters. "It's absolutely unthinkable."