Actress Hilary Swank laced up her running shoes and hit the road for a good cause yesterday. But, the Oscar winner wasn’t exercising for her own benefit; rather she pounded the pavement to help kick off a round-the-world run to raise awareness about the planet’s 1.1 billion people who lack access to clean drinking water.
Blue Planet Run is a charity event in which 20 runners (minus Swank) will log 15,200 miles over 95 days. Each participant will run 10 miles at a time and basically put their lives on hold during the 3-months-plus time period in hopes of bringing attention to the water issue.
The runners will traverse 16 countries, starting in the United States (the first runner left the lawn of the United Nations and headed for Boston yesterday) and flying to Ireland, then ferrying to England and France. From France, they will cross Europe and Asia on foot before flying from Beijing to Japan. The run will end where it began—-back in the United States.
As for Swank, the two-time Academy Award-winner said she wanted to get involved in the run because she had taken the “ordinary miracle” of clean drinking water “for granted far too many times.”
“Making safe drinking water available is everyone’s problem, and it’s a problem it will take everyone to solve,” she said.
To put the problem in perspective, according to the United Nations, nearly one in every six inhabitants of planet Earth – about 1 billion people – do not have access to clean drinking water.
He may not be limbering up for a 10-mile jog, but actor Fred Thompson is edging toward a presidential run—and he’s giving up his day job to do so.
Thompson announced this week that he will be quitting his role as prosecutor on the NBC series “Law & Order.”
According to network executives, Thompson asked to be released from the show after five seasons so he could explore a possible run for president. The actor said that “given the creative and scheduling constraints of the upcoming season” he didn’t feel he could give 100% to either commitment if he tried to juggle both.
Despite his departure from the hit TV show, the 64-year-old actor, a former U.S. senator from Tennessee, has yet to announce he’s seeking the GOP nomination. Although, according to several political websites, Thompson has been touting himself as “a Reaganesque conservative.”
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