Edward Norton
Reluctant celebrity, staunch social activist
This well-known reluctant celebrity definitely isn’t reserved when it comes to social activism. His passion has extended most toward working to improve the quality of living in low-income communities and supporting environmental causes, like renewable energy.
Norton has been a trustee of the Enterprise Foundation since 2000, a nonprofit affordable housing developer. His developer grandfather, James Rouse, co-founded the organization and inspired Norton’s belief that low-income citizens should have good, affordable housing available and be able to rise above poverty. His work with the group extends further back; from ’91 to ’93 he worked in the New York office as a writer and photographer, continuing his support for Enterprise at special events after his acting career and star status skyrocketed.
While in the process of fitting his own home with solar panels, Norton came up with the idea of supporting others through his purchase. He convinced BP Solar to join up, offering free solar power systems to low-income families each time a celebrity buys a system for themselves. To date, Solar Neighbors has helped numerous Los Angeles families, chosen by Enterprise.
A Golden Globe winner and Oscar nominee, Norton’s long-standing interest in the health and welfare of communities came to him early on, while growing up in Columbia, MD, a racially diverse, planned community designed by his grandfather.
The quintessential New Yorker relishes his private life and has said he would be devastated if he became so famous he had to stop taking the subway. He sticks to his guns, once refusing to smoke in a movie, though the character was intended to, and slamming the tradition of celebrities being showered with lavish gift baskets at awards shows. “I mean the gift baskets, worth amounts of money that a low-income family could live on for a year, [are given to] people who have so much already. It gets depressing. You sit there, going, ‘This is an embarrassment.’”
Norton has been named International Man of the Year by British GQ magazine, doing much before and since to prove the title’s accuracy, including signing a petition being sent to the U.N. for the universal decriminalization of homosexuality; creating and contributing to a Middle East Peacemakers Fund at Yale (his alma mater) in response to 9/11; holding benefit film screenings; hosting a National Geographic program, Strange Days on Planet Earth, about environmental issues; and being a continuing board member of Friends of the High Line, a group dedicated to saving an elevated green space in Manhattan.
