Celebrities, America Online Team Up To Offer Oscar Photos as Benefit for DATA, Bono’s AIDS Organization
Some celebrities were given cameras to take pictures at events leading up to and including yesterday's 75th Annual Academy Awards ceremony, and those photos will benefit Bono's AIDS organization, Debt, AIDS, Trade in Africa, or DATA, Liz Smith reports in her syndicated column in the Los Angeles Times. Actors Adrien Brody, Ben Affleck, Colin Farrell, Diane Lane and Queen Latifah will "snap away," according to Smith. America Online will then make a donation to DATA for every "VIP photo album" downloaded (Smith, Los Angeles Times, 3/21).
Elizabeth Taylor
Oscar-winning actress Elizabeth Taylor has said that the Oscar ceremony would be her "swan song from acting" and that she will now "focus on AIDS activism," Reuters reports. Taylor said in an interview with the television show "Access Hollywood" that the Oscars "will be my swan song on the stage. I've retired from acting; it doesn't really interest me that much anymore. It seems kind of superficial because now my life is AIDS, not acting." Taylor is considered "one of the first celebrities" to work as an HIV/AIDS advocate, after the death of her friend actor Rock Hudson in 1985 from AIDS-related causes (Reuters, 3/20).