You may remember her from teen blockbuster hits American Pie and Scary Movie, but actress Shannon Elizabeth has for the past few years been busy with one of her biggest roles yet – wildlife conservation.
A journey that started with Elizabeth rescuing dogs and cats in the United States has seen the star making South Africa her second home, and doing what she says is her life purpose – helping animals.
Elizabeth broke down in tears on Thursday as she spoke about the day she first realised the tremendous threat some animals were under.
“I came across a video of an elephant that had been poached,” she said.
“In the video, the ranger who had found the elephant said the poor baby had been suffering that entire night.
“When you watch the video and you see the elephant, you see her trunk in one area and what was left of her face in another area – but you can only make out the mouth.
“She was still alive. She was still breathing,” Elizabeth said.
“I had seen so many videos but I have never seen one where they [the animals] were still breathing and suffering like that.
“I didn’t realise until that moment how much that was happening.
“For me, the movement of the mouth was her crying out for help . . . and the fact that nobody was coming [to help the elephant] – it gets me every time,” Elizabeth said, sobbing.
“So I can’t just sit around and do nothing, because they’re depending on us to be their voice.
“We’re the ones doing this to them so we have to be the ones to save them.”
Elizabeth, who now calls Cape Town her home away from home in Los Angeles, is on a first-time visit to Nelson Mandela Bay with her Capetonian boyfriend, Simon Borchert, to learn more about wildlife conservation.
She had recently set up the Shannon Elizabeth Foundation, which has a focus on conservation, the actress said.
She will be spending the next two days at the Shamwari game reserve, one of the epicentres of wildlife conservation in the Eastern Cape.
Paul Gardiner, whose father founded the game reserve, said conservation was a subject close to his family’s heart.
“Shamwari was founded by my dad and we sold it about 10 years ago,” Gardiner said.
“We’ve kept our family lodge and a piece of land that is adjacent to Shamwari and that’s why it’s called ‘Founder’s Lodge’, because my dad was the founder of not only the lodge, but the legacy and reserves and all of the wildlife that is now so abundant in the Eastern Cape.
“[We will be] showing and telling them the whole story about the history of the Eastern Cape’s wildlife over the past 25 years,” he said.
Borchert, who is the foundation’s director of operations, said: “I think it’s absolutely critical to realise that not only is there an incredible moral obligation to protect our rhino, but there is an economic opportunity in doing so.
“And there is an upliftment opportunity.
“If we’re going to save our animals, we have to use the communities surrounding these protected areas as part of the solution.”
Elizabeth said while acting was her job, “my life purpose is to help animals, to help people and to do good in this world”.
“I started travelling to Africa in 2015 and spent a couple of months in Zimbabwe and South Africa, meeting as many people as I could in conservation,” she said.
“That journey continued in 2016 in Kenya and South Africa, and that’s when I decided I wanted to live here [in Cape Town] and that when I was back home [in the US] “I could just work.
“I would go and work, and I’d come here [SA] and work on my life mission.”