The Titanic actress whose one-meal-a-day vegan pitch won over Oprah Winfrey
Suzy Amis Cameron played Rose's granddaughter Lizzy in Titanic, then largely swapped acting for food activism. She and her husband James Cameron went vegan after a 2011 documentary, and her cookbook urging readers to change just one meal a day convinced Oprah Winfrey to try it herself.
Born in Oklahoma City on January 5, 1962, Amis worked as a Ford model before acting through the 1980s and 1990s, with parts in The Usual Suspects and The Ballad of Little Jo. On Fandango (1985) she worked alongside Sam Robards, son of Lauren Bacall and Jason Robards; they married the following year and divorced in 1994. She met James Cameron while filming Titanic and married him in 2000.
The couple became vegan in 2012 after watching Forks Over Knives. Two years later they co-founded Plant Power Task Force with Craig McCaw to highlight how livestock farming affects the climate, backing Chatham House studies on diet and climate across several countries and, in 2015, a campaign to tie environmental concerns into the US Dietary Guidelines. Her 2018 book OMD, reissued in paperback as The OMD Plan, argued that replacing one meal daily was enough to help health and the planet.
Education and fashion became further outlets. In 2006 she and her sister Rebecca founded Muse Global Schools near Calabasas, California, which in 2015 became the first K-12 school in the country to serve an entirely plant-based lunch; it is also zero waste and solar powered, using sunflower-shaped panels designed by James Cameron. Her Red Carpet Green Dress project, begun in 2009, put gowns made from recycled, vintage or eco materials on the Oscars red carpet.
Home is now New Zealand, split between Wellington and farmland in the Wairarapa. There is a tension there: the farm runs 500 to 600 cattle for regenerative grazing to build soil and store carbon. The Camerons described this as a stepping stone toward livestock-free farming, and said a lockdown shortage of foreign workers had delayed their switch.
Source: Suzy Amis Cameron
