15 Surprising Ways Celebs Made The World Better
![15 Surprising Ways Celebs Made The World Better](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/6/5/776865_320x180.jpg)
Many celebrities are vacuous, vain, and egotistical, focusing solely on themselves. It's almost become a given that the famous and wealthy don't care about the people who work for them or the rest of the world. There are some people, however, who make excellent use of their wealth and influence.
Now, a celebrity should find it simple to give back because they don't stand to lose much in the process. However, doing well when you have the means is a rarer occurrence than it should be. Because of this, we notice when a well-known individual donates a portion of their earnings to help others, fight for equality, or save the planet.
Empathy is less common than it should be in Hollywood, so when it does appear, most people are taken aback.
So bring the popcorn and a big gulp of your beverage of choice because here's a list of 15 actors, authors, artists, and filmmakers who used their wealth and position to make the world a better place.
![By 2018, Newman's Own had donated half a billion dollars to charity. They reached that milestone on their 35th birthday, and had donated to over 7,600 charities. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/6/4/776864.jpg)
Source: Newman's Own Foundation
![Hugh Jackman owns a coffee brand that donates all its profits to charity. LAUGHING MAN ****** Specifically, all the profits from Laughing Man Coffee & Tea go to a charity that helps the farmers that actually grow the company's products. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/6/3/776863.jpg)
Source: CBS
![In 2014, Cristiano Ronaldo paid for a 10-month-old baby's plastic surgery. The price tag was $83,000, and the parents had approached Ronaldo and asked him to auction off his jersey and cleats to pay for the surgery, but he decided to just cover it himself. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/6/0/776860.jpg)
Source: Business Insider
![Alex Trebek donated 74 acres of land in Hollywood Hills to the conservancy that manages public parkland there. That pretty much doubled the size of public parkland, and it allowed the authorities to improve the trails already used by hikers and cyclists (that were on the donated land). CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/5/9/776859.jpg)
Source: LATimes
![Kevin smith started donating his residuals from Weinstein-produced movies to charity. JRY BOB R He made that decision in 2017, and started giving the money to Women in Film, which seeks to even out the gender disparity in the movie industry. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/5/7/776857.jpg)
Source: The Independent
![Most of the money George Lucas got from selling Star Wars to Disney went to charity. The sum was $4.05 billion, and Lucas announce he'd spend it on educational issues. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/6/2/776862.jpg)
Source: Vanity Fair
![Emilia Clarke started a charity in 2019 for people recovering from stroke or brain injury. It's called Same You, and she founded it after her own experience of surviving two brain aneurysms. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/5/8/776858.jpg)
Source: The New Yorker
![After visiting Jamaica, Snoop Dogg launched a project to give kids access to healthy food. Mind Gardens' mission is providing organic fruits and vegetables to kids all over the world, and Snoop started it after seeing the effects of malnutrition on Jamaican kids. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/6/1/776861.jpg)
Source: Digital Journal
![Dr. Dre donated all his royalties from an album to help Compton. All the royalties from, well, compton went into funding an arts and entertainment center in Compton. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/5/6/776856.jpg)
Source: Rolling Stone
![Anderson Cooper helped save a bunch of police dogs' lives. CN A N E After a police dog got shot in Norfolk, Virginia, in 2016, Cooper donated enough money to the department to buy all the dogs bulletproof vests. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/5/5/776855.jpg)
Source: Mashable
![Stephen King donates a lot of money, and usually doesn't announce it publicly. He only announces it to try and get other people to chip in like when he donated $1 million to Eastern Maine General Hospital, for example. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/5/0/776850.jpg)
Source: Rolling Stone
![J.K. Rowling donated SO much money, it was part of the reason she dropped off Forbes' billionaire list. $980 She dropped off the list in 2012, both because of high tax rates in Britain at the time and because she'd donated $160 million to charity. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/5/2/776852.jpg)
Source: Snopes
![When the internet tried to troll Taylor Swift, she used it as an opportunity for charity. In 2012, she was going to perform a concert at a venue that won in a Facebook poll - thanks to trolls, that was Boston's Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. The contest organizers then removed that school, but Swift promised to donate $10,000 to it anyway. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/5/4/776854.jpg)
Source: TIME
![In 2006, Nic Cage gave $2 million to Amnesty International. He had been working with them for two years by that point, and had collaborated with them on Lord of War. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/5/1/776851.jpg)
Source: Digital Spy
![In 2007, Chance the Rapper raised over $2 million for arts education in Chicago Public Schools. Funding for public schools is the single most important investment a community can make, he said. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/5/3/776853.jpg)
Source: ABC