Actors and Politics

Many American actors and directors these days use the cinema to put across political messages. George Clooney, Sean Penn, Tommy Lee Jones and, of course, Susan Sarandon. Maybe it's always been the case that actors wish to be more than just repositaries of others' ideas but desire to make known their own.
I find some modern American films rather one sided in the positions they take on matters like "welfare" and "war" - particularly the Iraq war. They expect their audience to be on the side of "peace". Which reminds me of a historian of wars visiting the editor of The New Yorker and being told, on leaving, that "we here at The New Yorker, you know, are in favour of peace."
As someone said: Isn't everybody?
Not according to Clooney, Sarandon and company.
When Marlon Brando was asked what he thought of some political point of view he replied to the effect that all he was, was an actor.
They don't want to be just actors anymore as if acting is not all that splendid a profession.
John Gielgud summed up his feelings on being an actor when he was 89 years old. He said: "O, I don't go to the theatre any more. I used to go twice a week, but I stopped all that. I do think that, over my long life - and I've lived through two world wars - that theatre has been completely unimportant. Yet I've been obsessed by it all my life, and I'm a bit ashamed that it interests me much more than politics, say. It's been an escape for me, which I'm not particularly proud of. It seems a bit childlike."
Well it's not childlike to the likes of George Clooney and Susan Sarandon - and maybe it's the better for it.