AT THE age of 11, American actress Daryl Hannah met a calf that would change her life.
Then living in Chicago, her family would drive to Wisconsin on weekends, with regular stops at a diner off the highway. She always asked to stay in the car, and once, when her parents agreed, she made the acquaintance of a truck-full of calves.
'For a full hour, this one calf was licking me and kissing me, it was so adorable. So when the truck driver came back, I said: 'Excuse me sir, what is this calf's name?''.
It was not the answer she expected: 'Veal. Tomorrow morning at 7.'
'I snapped. I suddenly did not have the capacity to disassociate what I was eating from the creature that it had been... It was too visceral,' she told Life!.
Hannah was here last week to receive a United Nations Champions of the Earth 2007 award on behalf of former US vice president Al Gore.
The encounter not only turned the young Hannah into a vegetarian, but also set the tone for a life that now seems to have been only interrupted by an illustrious acting career.
Hannah is best remembered for film roles that include the mermaid Madison in Splash (1984), and, more recently, the one-eyed assassin Elle Driver in Kill Bill 1 and 2 (2003/2004).
Now 46, she is making headlines more as an environmental activist.
Last year, she was arrested while perched up a tree protesting the sale of an urban farm in Los Angeles. And there is no shortage of times she has been photographed drinking biofuel that goes into her car to prove its relative non-toxicity.
So what of acting?
'I am not saying I won't do movies again. If there's a great script or film-maker, or if I have to pay bills, sure... But for the most part, I feel like I have satiated that part of my life. This is where my passion lies,' she said.
But it's no headline-hungry traipse with environmentalism. From the age of seven to 17, she spent time at summer camps where she became 'centred by nature', and she continues to walk the talk, she says.
Besides 'over-carbon neutralising' for things like air travel, she lives in a one-room home in the Rocky Mountains, built out of green materials, solar-powered and backed by a bio-diesel generator. She grows most of her food, and dresses largely in sustainably produced fabrics.
A moss deck serves as a living room in summer and autumn, and two dogs, two cats and four horses - all rescued - live with her.
Early last year, she started an online video log - www.dhlovelife.com - for her environmental material, an idea sparked from a TV deal that did not materialise.
'I heard about video blogging and figured it was great, I would just post my stuff on the Internet. It was free, and I could post any content I wanted,' she said.
There's no mystery to the name - it's about her love for life, plus 'lovelife.com was already taken, so I added dh'. Her own love life remains offline. (She has never married, but dated singer Jackson Browne and the late John F. Kennedy, Jr.)
Being asked about it seems to annoy her as much as companies that 'green-wash' - or try to appear environmentally friendly when they are not. The latter are the likely targets of the Sustainable Biofuels Alliance, her tie-up with country singer Willie Nelson and biodiesel producers Bob and Kelly King, which aims at helping consumers choose genuinely clean fuel options.
She has no patience for celebrities who are milking the green movement for their own fame, either.
'If you aren't sincere, it'll come out in the wash... It's not you that embraces the cause, it's the cause that embraces you,' she said.
Indeed, her passion keeps her busy. Aside from editing footage from her year and a half spent sussing out sex slavery from Thailand to Peru, she is working on a documentary on mycologist and mushroom aficionado Paul Stemets. She is also helping to organise a 'green' concert series by Virgin Records.
But her quest to live by example is far from over.
She said, grinning: 'Maybe I could get an electric car, or one that runs on alcohol. I have the Pontiac Trans-Am from Kill Bill... maybe that's what I should do with it.'
