LimeLife Exclusive: First Look at VIVmag's Cover Story with Marcia Gay Harden

VIVmag cover girl, Marcia Gay Harden

Award-Winning Actress Marcia Gay Harden Cares About Much More Than the Red Carpet

Oscar winner Marcia Gay-Harden, who's been a highly sought after screen and stage actress since making her first splash in the Coen Brother's 1990 gangster epic Miller's Crossing, does more than lend her name to charitable causes -- she gets her hands dirty.

Here's our exclusive sneak-peek excerpt of her upcoming cover story for VIVmag - an all digital, interactive luxury lifestyle magazine -- that's surely the wave of the future.

Sitting pretty and making a difference

...Awards and recognition aside, Harden says that it's important to her to ask, "How do you give back with your work to the community in which you live? I have an opportunity to give back, an opportunity to take my time and my resources and directly share them with New York organizations and people." Harden enjoys being hands-on with the charities she chooses, noting, "I've never really liked just writing a check."

One of Harden's favorites is Riverkeeper: Harden and Scheel, who met on the set of 1996's The Spitfire Grill, have been supporters of the organization for the past 12 years, after hearing a speech by Robert Kennedy, Jr., who is vice chair and chief prosecuting attorney for the organization. "He said [that] it's my right, an American's right - anyone's right - to clean water," she recalls. "And that for someone to pollute, they're taking away my rights, which took it out of the realm of being an inevitable consequence of industry."

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"Water" is Gay Harden's favorite beauty product

The couple started working with Kennedy to bring greater awareness to Riverkeeper, which is dedicated to protecting the Hudson River and the drinking water supply of New York City and Hudson Valley residents. (In fact, when the couple's son was born in 2004, they named him Hudson, after the river.) The watchdog organization is part of a greater Waterkeeper Alliance, made up of more than 200 programs around the globe.

Concern about protecting water supplies also led Harden to read Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry (Prometheus Books, 2006) by Gail A. Eisnitz. As a result, Harden and her family have been vegetarian for five years. "The kids have to have their rights to choose what they eat and if they want meat or whatever the hostess is serving when they go out," she explains. "But I've said no to hamburgers and no to hot dogs." And after seeing the 2008 documentary Flow: How Did a Handful of Corporations Steal Our Water?, which looks at the privatization of the world's dwindling water supply, she stopped drinking bottled water.

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Favorite designer? Carmen Marc Valvo.

She is also is the celebrity spokesperson for the YMCA of Greater New York, as well as a board member, and works with Help USA, which serves the homeless, veterans, victims of domestic abuse and people with HIV/AIDS-and the American Red Cross. One of her favorite things about giving back is seeing the immediate effect the organizations have. Harden recalls the words of a young man who is now working as a YMCA counselor and a political intern: "This one boy said to me, ‘The Y didn't just change my life, it saved my life.' "

To read the complete interview by Josie Rubio, be sure to click over to VIVmag when the new issue becomes available on Nov. 1.

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