Anjelica Huston Tells Hollywood: No More Monkey Business

Academy Award-winning actor Anjelica Huston can’t stand cruelty to animals. “I simply won’t go on a set if I see an animal being abused,” she told PETA Senior Vice President Dan Mathews on the set of her latest project—a video for PETA about the use of great apes in the entertainment industry.

In the video—which PETA is sending to Hollywood film and TV producers and directors and to advertising agencies—Anjelica urges people in the entertainment industry not to use great apes in their work. She describes how newborn chimpanzees and orangutans are taken from their highly protective mothers and how the young animals are often beaten with fists and kicked in the head during terrifying training sessions.

“It’s a sad story that starts when the animals are babies, when they are torn away from their mothers and forced to depend upon human trainers,” says Anjelica. “Great ape mothers are fiercely protective of their newborns, which means that they must be tricked, sedated, or forcibly restrained when their infants are pulled from their arms. This cruel practice leaves lifelong emotional scars on both the mothers—who go into a deep depression—and the babies.”

No Retirement for Ape ‘Actors’ 

By age 8, young chimpanzees used in the entertainment industry have grown too strong to be handled, and they are usually discarded—often at dismal roadside zoos or pseudo-sanctuaries. There, they languish for decades—chimpanzees can live to age 60—in barren cages or dank, depressing concrete cells. During an investigation of a pseudo-sanctuary, PETA found a chimpanzee who reportedly had been used in the filming of The Planet of the Apes. The chimpanzee was living in an underground cement pit that resembled a dungeon and was strewn with rotten food and feces.

“Chimpanzees and orangutans belong in rain forests, where they can build nests, forage for natural foods, make and use tools, groom each other, and raise families,” says Anjelica in the video. “Using great apes in TV, movies, and advertising … causes a lifetime of suffering ….”