Look To The Stars News: Jon Voight

Celebrity Veterans Meet For Breakfast

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 13:24:00 -0000

Jon Voight and Charles Durning are two of the expected celebrities for The California Disabled Veteran Business Alliance’s Annual Salute to Veterans Day Breakfast.

The event, taking place on Friday, November 7, in Los Angeles, will honor 200 Vietnam vets, 100 active duty soldiers -just back from Iraq and Afghanistan – and 100 disabled vets of all wars.

Business and community leaders, including many celebrity veterans will be in attendance. Some of the expected attendees are DB Sweeney, Daniel Baldwin, Hip Hop artist David Banner, & Maxim Magazine’s ‘woman of the year’ Monica Hansen, Tommy Lasorda, Hal Linden, Gary Busey, Ed McMahon, Connie Stevens, Peter Marshal, Howard Dell (Olympic Medalist / Young & the Restless), Jack McGee, Ernie Hudson, Leyla Milani (Deal or No Deal), Ron Masak, Universal recording artist and USO pin-up girl Mayra Veronica and many more.

The breakfast event runs from 9-11 A.M. at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel in Los Angeles. To attend, or sponsor a veteran or service member’s attendance, contact Rachel Madison Hill at The Proper Image Events: 818-994-4661. For more information on the charity, visit the California Disabled Veteran Business Alliance website.

Look To The Stars Exclusive: The 60th Primetime Emmy Awards

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:30:00 -0000

Written by Rachel Zeskind

After preparing herself for the biggest night of the year, Look To The Stars Celebrity Ambassador Rachel Zeskind found her way to the red carpet of the 60th Primetime Emmy Awards earlier this week, where she caught up with some of the stars:

Arrival was tricky – after an apparent security breach, additional measures had been put into place to secure the safety of all in attendance, thus making parking an hour long waiting process that was filled with numerous police and bomb squad check points.

Once there – and very late a mad dash to connect with my publicist was made – I headed to the red carpet as fast as six-inch high-heeled shoes would allow. Then came the insanity of the red carpet for an event of this magnitude, hundreds of stars in front of a thousand members of the press. Video cameras and crews swarmed everywhere and camera’s flashed from every angle down the entire red carpet walk.

Honestly, it’s intimidating and weird. I stand there, suck in my tummy and try not to feel less pretty, less famous, less tall, less thin…yadayadayada… and remember that on this day, I am the very best reflection of me that I can be. I accept this, try to say something loving to myself and smile posing for the photo’s. My insides are vibrating and I hope I don’t look as freaked out as I feel inside. No matter how many times one walks down a red carpet, the experience is intimidating and surreal.

Once inside I took my seat and tried to decompress as the show began. From inside the Nokia Theater a sea of glamour spread out from the edges of the theater down to the stage. The room was abuzz. This is one of the few times every year when all the actors and actresses and producers and writers and directors all get a chance to be in the same place at the same time, catch up, meet the ones they don’t know, and acknowledge and appreciate their peers.

One of the most powerful acceptance speeches was by Glenn Close. Her statements about how Hollywood has finally begun to recognize that ‘mature’ women can be sexy and powerful and play the leads in successful TV shows was met by an eruption of applause. She is one of those ground-breaking, pace-setting leaders for all female actresses. It is women like her that shake it up and teach people that women are not disposable after thirty – in fact, they just get better, hotter, and smarter!

During the commercial breaks and after parties I was able to catch up with some celebrities and talk to them about their favorite charities, organizations and ask them what issues were on their hearts and minds currently.

Larry David of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ said voter fraud was a huge concern for him right now as we move closer and closer to the election date for our next US President.

Conan O’Brien of ‘Late Night With Conan O’Brien’ said his most recent favorite charity is the Fresh Air Fund NYC.

Christina DeRosa, the up and coming star who will be seen in the new FOX series ‘Dollhouse,’ said that she was an Agape member and fully supported their outreach programs.

At the TV Guide after party I caught up with Emmy award winning composer John Wineglass – whose favorite charity is CASA – and Jon Voight, who is a passionate supporter of the troops stationed overseas.

The point to this all is no matter who you are, what you do for a living or what you look like, you are a human being who sucks in air the same way all the stars do. Your brain shares similar positive and negative thoughts as anyone else’s and certain issues move your hearts too. As a human being you were given a very specific unique set of gifts, passions and abilities to be appreciated by yourself and others as well as to be used to do your part in changing the world we all share.

(photos copyright Rachel Zeskind)

Eat With The Sopranos... If You Dare

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:30:00 -0000

Written by Tim Saunders

Fans of the Sopranos will be licking their lips in anticipation at a new charity auction to hit the World Wide Web this week.

Charity Folks – the online charity auction specialists – are hosting an exciting opportunity to benefit the United Service Organization, and are offering bidders the chance to meet and eat with some of the stars from the hit TV show. One lucky winner and three friends will join Tony Sirico and Steve Schirripa – otherwise known as Paulie Walnuts and Bobby Balcala – for an intimate dining experience at New York City’s Giardino’s Restaurant and enjoy the ambiance only members of New Jersey’s most beloved crime family can provide.

And if you can’t get to New York to be part of that unique dinner, perhaps you would like to spend an evening dining with Jon Voight in Los Angeles. The USO is also offering a meet and eat experience with the 69-year-old Academy Award winner.

The USO is the only organization chartered by the US Congress to meet the human service needs of American Armed Forces personnel and their families. Their mission is to provide morale, welfare and recreation-type services to men and women in uniform.

Both auctions run until August 5 and have already reached bids of $2,500.

Angelina Jolie - Helping Her Heroes

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 08:34:29 -0000

Written by Tim Saunders

She may be known for her various roles on the silver screen that have earned her Golden Globes and an Academy Award, but perhaps Angelina Jolie’s greatest role is that which she plays in real life – Global Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. And it is exceedingly clear that the dedication that she shows in her acting is reflected in her work for humanitarian causes around the world.

The 32-year-old actor has just returned from a visit to Iraq, in which she met with top political officials to discuss people displaced by the war.

“There are over two million displaced people and there never seems to be a real coherent plan to help them,” she told CNN on her return. “There’s lots of goodwill and lots of discussion, but there seems to be a lot of talk at the moment and a lot of pieces that need to be put together.”

The trip was a follow-up to her visit to the country six months ago, and marks Jolie’s commitment to displaced persons and refugees in war-ravaged nations, and confirms her dedication to implement solutions wherever possible.

“Of the two million internally displaced, it’s estimated 58 percent are under 12 years old. It’s a very high number of people in a very, very vulnerable situation and a lot of young kids,” said Jolie. “So far, the different US officials I met with and different local people I’ve met with all have shared concerns, very, very strongly. They have spoken out about the humanitarian crisis, but there seems to be a block in.”

Jolie traveled to Baghdad with Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky, and met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, and Refugees Minister Abdel Samad Rahman Sultan. As a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, Jolie is well known for using her status as a superstar to generate media coverage about the plight of refugees and the conditions under which they live, and this trip to Iraq proved no different.

“This trip is to get a better picture of the internally displaced people and to discuss [the situation] with the local government, with our government, with the NGOs and with local people,” said Jolie. “I’m not good at policy and fixing all this and saying what’s wrong, but I do know that, for example, U.N.H.C.R. needs to be more active inside Iraq… I know that this is one thing that needs to be addressed and solved because there does need to be a real presence here to help count the people and register the people. Also, the prime minister here needs to empower the government that deals with migration and displacement to be able to address the concerns for these people, and that hasn’t happened in a significant way yet.”

Born in Los Angeles in 1975, Jolie’s acting career has already spanned two decades. Her first feature role was in Lookin’ to Get Out in 1982, a film co-written and co-produced by her father, the acclaimed actor Jon Voight. Since then, she has received Golden Globe Awards for the television movies George Wallace (1997) and Gia (1998), and her film credits include Hackers (1995), The Bone Collector (1999), Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003), and Mr and Mrs Smith (alongside her partner, Brad Pitt, in 2005).

It was while filming the first Tomb Raider movie in Cambodia, a country stricken by poverty, that Jolie began to become aware of humanitarian issues around her. She approached the UNHCR for more information, and was sent to Sierra Leone, a small African country that – like the Democratic Republic of the Congo – had been devastated by years of brutal civil war. Seeing firsthand the enormous challenges that refugees face was a life-altering experience for the actress, and she was named a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador in August 2001.

Over the next few years, Jolie witnessed some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. She visited refugee camps in Tanzania, Pakistan, Thailand, Ecuador, Kosovo, Kenya, and Namibia, covering all of her own costs and insisting on sharing the same living and working conditions as field workers.

In 2003 Jolie published Notes From My Travels, a compelling collection of journal entries from her early field missions. She now publishes her latest journal entries on the UNHCR website.

Since 2003, Jolie has traveled to refugee camps in Sri Lanka, Russia, Jordan, Beirut, and Egypt, and has also visited detained asylum seekers in Arizona. In 2005 she filmed an MTV special entitled “The Diary of Angelina Jolie and Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa”, portraying her trip to a remote group of villages in Kenya, and has visited Chad and Darfur several times since fighting erupted there in 2004.

In recent years, Jolie has been joined by Brad Pitt on many of her trips. In 2005 the pair witnessed the devastation of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake in Pakistan, and in 2006 they visited a school in Haiti supported by Wyclef Jean’s Yéle Haiti Foundation.

Also in 2006, the pair founded the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, which made initial donations of $1 million to Doctors Without Borders and Global Action for Children. This was followed by a $100,000 donation to the Daniel Pearl Foundation, another to the Duk Lost Boys Medical Clinic in the Sudan, and $1 million to help refugees in Chad and Darfur.

Angelina Jolie’s generosity seems bottomless, and her heart is clearly as big as her stardom. In 2005, she announced the founding of the National Centre for Refugee and Immigrant Children, an organization that provides free legal aid to asylum-seeking children, and personally funded it with $1 million over 2 years. She also co-chairs the Education Partnership for Children of Conflict, a program established at the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative that has pledged to help with the education of over 1 million children affected by conflict around the world.

Her missions to the most dangerous troublespots in the far-flung corners of the world look set to continue well into the future.

“It’s always hard to see decent people, families, living in such difficult conditions,” she said. “What is most upsetting is how long it is taking the international community to answer this crisis… You go to these places and you realize what life’s really about and what people are really going through. These people are my heroes.”

Celebrities sign Lamborghini for Child Safety Network

Sat, 02 Sep 2006 11:46:13 -0000

Written by Steve Purcell

Italian prestige sportscar manufacturer Lamborghini has donated one of its Gallardos to the Child Safety Network (CSN) for auction. The proceeds will go directly to the 17-year-old charity, which provides child safety information to US families.

To add to the uniqueness of the lot, the car was transported from Beverly Hills through Las Vegas to New York, collecting the signatures of celebrities on its way. Signatories include Ed Asner, Samuel L. Jackson, Jewel, Randy Travis and Jon Voight.

The car will be sold without a reserve. Details of the East coast auction are available at the auctioneers’ web site, kruse.com

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