National Geographic are celebrating 33 Visionary Changemakers, and amongst that illustrious number are two stars from the GFFA Harrison Ford and Ewan McGregor, who are both determined to enact positive change in the world around them, changes that will benefit future generations beyond their stellar artistic onscreen endeavours. First off, Harrison Ford.
For 35 years, Harrison Ford has served as the public face of the nonprofit Conservation International, where he’s currently vice chairman and whose mission he describes as “saving life on Earth, basically.” At 83, Ford is working harder than people half his age. When he’s not acting, he’s joining his CI colleagues in boardrooms with high-profile leaders such as French president Emmanuel Macron, petitioning for urgent resources to fight wildfires in Brazil, for commitments to conservation frameworks like the UN’s High Seas Treaty, and more. His superstar clout helps bring to the table the kind of state-level decision-makers necessary to accomplish anything of global consequence. And the depth of his commitment—the knowledge that he’s no one-off celebrity spokesperson, that he’ll be back in a year to follow up—helps hold them to account.
And Ewan McGregor:
Ewan McGregor is on a mission to bring us beautifully unfiltered views of the world—from the back of his vintage BMW motorcycle. In Long Way Home, the new installment of his Long Way television series, the Star Wars actor set out on a 7,000-mile transcontinental motorcycle trip through 17 European countries with fellow actor Charley Boorman. The duo’s seat-of-the-pants approach to travel content, visiting places the guidebooks rarely write about, is like the ultimate antidote to today’s overly polished social media vacation posts. “We’re encouraging people to go out into the world and look at it,” McGregor says. “Especially these days, when everybody’s becoming more and more attached to looking down into our phones.”
