{"id":263438,"date":"2023-01-10T07:39:37","date_gmt":"2023-01-10T07:39:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=263438"},"modified":"2023-01-11T07:42:57","modified_gmt":"2023-01-11T07:42:57","slug":"how-zelenskiy-became-hollywoods-man-of-the-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=263438","title":{"rendered":"How Zelenskiy became Hollywood\u2019s man of the hour"},"content":{"rendered":"

Isobel Koshiw — The Guardian Jan 8, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n

When Ben Stiller walked into the office of Ukraine\u2019s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy<\/a>, in June, he embraced the wartime leader telling him, \u201cYou\u2019re my hero.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stiller is one in a line of stars from the entertainment world who made the long journey to Kyiv to meet Zelenskiy \u2013 himself a former actor and comedian. A journey that involves an overnight train journey from Poland as commercial flights \u2013 let alone private jets \u2013 cannot fly in Ukraine\u2019s airspace for safety reasons.<\/p>\n

Before Stiller came the actor Sean Penn<\/a>, who has visited three times since the invasion, and is making a documentary about the war, in which Zelenskiy will no doubt feature.<\/p>\n

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Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

On his last visit, Penn gave Zelenskiy one of his Oscars to keep until after Ukraine\u2019s victory. It was Penn\u2019s way of demonstrating how much he believes the president and the country will survive this war.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel terrible. This is for you. It\u2019s just a symbolic silly thing, but if I know this is here with you then I\u2019ll feel better and stronger for the fight,\u201d Penn told Zelenskiy in November.<\/p>\n

Other stars hosted by Zelenskiy include the British adventurist Bear Grylls, the Virgin founder, Richard Branson, the actor Jessica Chastain<\/a>, U2\u2019s Bono, the TV host David Letterman, the Spanish-American celebrity chef Jos\u00e9 Andr\u00e9s and the historian Timothy Snyder.<\/p>\n

Angelina Jolie and the 1980s action star Jean-Claude Van Damme, who did shoots in Kyiv for a Netflix production two years ago, have also visited Ukraine to meet refugees and troops. Van Damme posed for videos with Ukrainian soldiers in December, giving the traditional Ukrainian war cry, \u201cGlory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes.\u201d<\/p>\n

And there are many more celebrities who have yet to make the visit to Ukraine but have been using their platforms to raise funds. The Ukrainian-born actor Mila Kunis and her husband, Ashton Kutcher<\/a>, who were friends with the Zelenskiys before the war, raised more than $30m at the beginning of the war.<\/p>\n

The Star Wars actor Mark Hamill, who volunteered to become one of the faces for the Zelenskiys\u2019 fundraising platform, United24, has just become the English-language voice of the Ukraine-wide air raid alert system app.<\/p>\n

According to those who have followed and been involved in Zelenskiy\u2019s communications efforts, it was the president who kept Hollywood following events after the initial media spike subsided. \u201cHe\u2019s a natural at orating because of his background,\u201d said Nikki Fowler, the president of the Hollywood Critics Association, who is also half-Ukrainian. \u201cI think that resonates with a lot of celebrities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hollywood \u201crespects\u201d Zelenskiy because for them he\u2019s a real-life hero, according to Fowler. \u201cWhen you\u2019re able to have access to a real-life hero, [the type] that you just don\u2019t see in movies, who would not want to support that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Zelenskiy\u2019s journey has been \u201clife imitating art\u201d and has intrigued not only Hollywood but the US in general, said Fowler. The Hollywood Reporter journalist Etan Vlessing said Zelenskiy\u2019s ability to \u201ccommand the 24-hour news cycle using social media and video addresses has generated major respect and props in Hollywood, rather than fleeting fame\u201d.<\/p>\n

This year, Zelenskiy\u2019s address at Cannes received a standing ovation<\/a>. Time magazine, Politico and the Financial Times made him their person of the year.<\/p>\n

Outside Ukraine\u2019s parliament, in perhaps a nod to his past as an actor, Zelenskiy created a Ukrainian Walk of Fame. Those deemed the biggest supporters of Ukraine have been honoured with a plaque. Penn, Andr\u00e9s are among those featured alongside politicians such as the UK\u2019s Boris Johnson, who became a celebrity in Ukraine during his tenure, as well as the leaders of Poland, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and the EU.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a former actor, Zelenskiy appreciates the power of actors, especially from Hollywood,\u201d according to his previous press secretary Iuliia Mendel, the author of the book The Fight of Our Lives<\/a>. \u201cIt made Ukraine more popular [worldwide].\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Continues \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No doubt encouraged by studio bosses, many Hollywood celebrities like Sean Penn and Ben Stiller have feted President Zelensky. Illustrating how the media and its celebrity culture are being used to further the New World Order\u2019s agenda <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":255993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-263438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-The_Media","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=263438"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":263442,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263438\/revisions\/263442"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/255993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=263438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=263438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=263438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}