Mena Suvari Says Vegan Pregnancy Is Safe and Healthy In New Campaign

Actress Mena Suvari is encouraging everyone to go vegan with a new advertisement campaign made in partnership with animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). As part of the visual campaign, Suvari—who is expecting her first child with husband Michael Hope this spring—is pictured nude holding an oversized avocado over her baby bump with the slogan “Go vegan, baby!”

“With everything I know about the cruelty of the meat industry and the health benefits of going vegan, I knew I wanted to raise my son to be a kind, loving, and empathetic person, and I think that can start with how we eat as a family,” Suvari told PETA.

Suvari’s vegan pregnancy

The 41-year-old American Beauty actress has been vegan since 2017 and married Hope in 2018. The couple had been trying to conceive for more than a year before Suvari became pregnant in July. The actress plans to have a home birth and will name her son after Hope’s grandfather, Suvari told People. “It’s still this process for me of believing it and accepting that something this beautiful could happen for me,” Suvari said. 

Suvari has been an active animal-rights activist in recent years. In 2019, the Rhode Island-born actress penned a letter to her home state’s Speaker of the House Nicholas A. Mattiello in support of House Bill 5267, which would ban the use of live animals in medical training programs—a practice still used by Rhode Island’s Brown University. Last year, Suvari starred in anti-fur film Hide which featured music by vegan pop star Billie Eilish and a message about the cruelty of exploiting animals for fashion.