Netflix star Yael Stone resurfaced on the red carpet after saying goodbye to Hollywood due to climate change.
Yael, best known for playing Lorna Morello on Orange Is The New Black, rocked new red hair and a silk pink dress at Melbourne International Film Festival this week.
It comes four years after Yael left the US for good and returned to her native Australia after deciding it was ‘environmentally unjust to pursue a life across two continents.’
She said on Instagram in 2020: ‘From the very privileged position of having been granted a green card for the USA I have decided it’s environmentally unjust to pursue a life across two continents.
‘Australia will be home and when I have to travel for work I will be investing in @feat.artists. More on that later. This is my way of kicking off real 2020 change in my life.
‘I’m aware it comes from a position of extreme privilege. Skin in the game.’
That year, Yael also became tearful when she opened up about how climate change impacts her views on parenting. She shares six-year-old daughter Pemau Stone with ex-Jack Manning Bancroft.
Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald at the Sydney Opera House at the All About Women festival, the star even got tearful over the complicated issue.
‘I’m really, really glad I didn’t know what I know now [about climate change], because I don’t know if she’d be here,’ Yael said.
Asked by an audience member if it’s immoral to bring children into an ‘uncertain future’, Yael replied: ‘It’s really overwhelming, I’m terrified, [but] I have to use the anxiety I feel to act.
‘I do totally hear your question, and I would love to have another kid, but it’s hard.’
Now, Yael is more selective over her roles and last year starred in exclusively Australia-based TV productions: comedy drama Wellmania, crime drama Bay of Fires and drama One Night, which also featured Doctor Who’s Jodie Whittaker.
Her next role – which was filmed in Sydney – is in thriller film The Correspondent about Oz TV reporter Peter Greste, who was arrested and detained in Cairo in 2013 while reporting for Al Jazeera.
Outside of acting she has campaigned for social justice and educated herself about environmental changes by studying Sustainable Communities at her local university in Wollongong.
Yael also recently founded a non-for-profit to help unemployed coal and steel workers gain new skills.
Asked about her new life in Australia by Forbes, Yael said: ‘I fell in love with this place as an early teenager. The escarpment and the ocean create this contained village that feels like it can’t get too big.
‘I’m not a city person, and after living in New York for seven years, being in a small town was really attractive.’
She added: ‘I’m a private person. I love acting more than anything in the world. But the showbizzy and red carpet stuff isn’t my favourite.’
Orange Is The New Black is available to stream on Netflix.
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