Morgan Fairchild on Why She Embraces Twitter for Real News, Politics, Activism… and Spurs Red Carpets

The actress reveals why Twitter has become her main medium for disseminating information about issues ranging from domestic politics to global policy

Morgan Fairchild
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For her 34,000+ Twitter followers, actress Morgan Fairchild is a one-stop shop for important news.

However, the 64-year-old actress, who’s been entertaining audiences on the big and small screens since the ’70s, is much more than just a pretty face — she’s a veritable social media wire service on international issues that she believes the world doesn’t pay enough attention to these days.

Posts like this show exactly how well versed she is about news that is mostly glossed over these days except by the most hard-core of U.S. news junkies:

Also read: SAG Election Results: Amy Brenneman and Morgan Fairchild Make the Grade; so does Sacha Baron-Cohen’s brother!

“[Some of my followers] don’t really expect the eclectic nature of my interests,” she told The Daily Beast in a new interview from Kansas City, where she’s currently acting in a stage production of “Murder Among Friends.”

“‘Well, I never thought I’d be getting my news from Morgan Fairchild!’ is something I get sometimes,” she added.

Fairchild’s new interview is filled with insight about why she’s taken to the 140-character count social media service to express her points of view.

Here are seven of the top takeaways from probably the only woman in Hollywood who could go toe-to-toe with Angelina Jolie:

Also read: ‘Contagion’ Screenwriter Blasts Ebola Panic as ‘Stupidity, Fear and Politics’

1. She doesn’t care about Hollywood BS — and isn’t gonna change a thing in order to please the masses.
“I probably would have more followers if I tweeted more red-carpet stuff–but I don’t care about red-carpet stuff!” Fairchild said. “I’ve come to realize a lot of Americans don’t get to see much news anymore. A lot of in-depth coverage isn’t done on television… I think it’s important that people know what’s going on in the rest of the world, and not become isolationist.”

Talk about a breath of fresh air. Kardashians, please take note.

2. She originally started on Twitter because of the uprisings in Egypt.
Fairchild said that it was the uprising in the Middle East exposed her to Twitter’s immense power and eventually got her to use the social media service.

“I got on Twitter and started following the Egyptian Revolution–people on the street, the barricades,” she explained. “And then started expanding.”

3. This level of activism isn’t a new thing for her.
In the ’80s during the Reagan era, Fairchild was an early AIDS activist.

“I lost friends, I know I lost work… because I would visit hospices,” she remembered. “People said I couldn’t come over for dinner because I might give [AIDS] to their kids.”

4. Her interest in politics stems from an interest in science.
Paging Bill Nye!

Fairchild is actually a science diehard, and it’s this drive that fuels her passion for politics. More specifically, she says that social anthropology and the psychology of terrorist organizations is what drives her.

“All of my [political] history starts basically with the fact that I’m a science nerd and wanted to be a doctor or paleontologist when I was a kid,” she continued.

“Even when I was doing ‘Flamingo Road,’ I was taking anthropology classes at night at UCLA… My political interests were driven by interest in science. That’s why I became an AIDS activist. That’s why I tweet a lot about global warming… Al Gore and I were sort of the first people in DC talking about [climate change] in the ’80s.”

5. She finds political activism more interesting than acting.
Fairchild doesn’t depend on acting in order to be able to pursue her true passions. She acts only when she wants to and on her own terms. 

“I have much more fun doing this than movies!” she said. “This is how I form opinions. My approach is to go out and talk to the real people, on-the-ground… whether I’m bouncing around the hills of Bosnia during the war [or] meeting militia people.”

6. She spent time in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the ’90’s genocide.
File this under things we didn’t know about Fairchild.

In 1994, while shooting a role in the film “Gospa” in Zagreb, Croatia, alongside Martin Sheen and Michael York, she visited refugee camps and got to know the locals who were caught up in the throws of war.

Her time there was written about in 1995 by Spy magazine.

“She was the perfect combination of being very beautiful and very smart and charming,” said Peter Galbraith, the U.S. ambassador there at the time.

“She was incredibly curious about what was going on in the country… So I took her down 25 miles from Zagreb where there was a 2-kilometer Zone of Separation between the Serb forces and the Croatian forces, as a product of an agreement I had negotiated. So we went into the Zone of Separation, and there were thousands of [Muslim] refugees… trying to get into Croatia, and the Croatians wouldn’t let them in. It was quite amazing This was a country at war. This is an actress, a multimillion-dollar property. And she went right down into a mine area, between two hostile sides. That’s not a normal thing to do.”

7. One of her top issues these days is the impact of improper financial political contributions.
“The Citizens United decision, that just opened the floodgates to all this money entering the system, I find it terrible for the future of democracy,” she concluded. “People should know this is going on.”

Her followers already include Katie Couric, Frank Rich, Donna Brazile, and Jake Tapper… along with RuPaul, Pee-wee Herman, Mark Ruffalo, and William Shatner.

For more of Fairchild’s musing on Twitter, here’s her handle @MorgFair.

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