Angelina Jolie has donated $200,000 to the NAACP for her birthday.
The actress turned 45 on Thursday (04.06.20) and donated the large sum to the civil rights organisation to show her support for the Black Lives Matter movement and those protesting the death of George Floyd, who was killed when a police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes in Minnesota last month.
Angelina told Entertainment Tonight in a statement: "Rights don’t belong to anyone group to give to another. Discrimination and impunity cannot be tolerated, explained away or justified. I hope we can come together as Americans to address the deep structural wrongs in our society. I stand with the NAACP Legal Defence Fund in their fight for racial equality, social justice, and their call for urgent legislative reform."
Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively also recently donated $200,000 to the NAACP Legal Defence Fund, which fights for racial justice.
They shared a joint statement on Instagram, which read: "We’ve never had to worry about preparing our kids for different rules of law or what might happen if we’re pulled over in the car.
"We don’t know what it’s like to experience that life day in and day out.
"We can’t imagine feeling that kind of fear and anger.
"We’re ashamed that in the past we’ve allowed ourselves to be uninformed about how deeply rooted systemic racism is.
"We’ve been teaching our children differently than the way our parents taught us.
"We want to educate ourselves about other people’s experiences and talk to our kids about everything, all of it… especially our own complicity.
"We talk about our bias, blindness and our mistakes. We look back and see so many mistakes which have led us to deeply examine who we are and who we want to become. They’ve led us to huge avenues of education.
"We are committed to raising our kids so they never grow up feeding this insane pattern and so they’ll do their best to never inflict pain on another being consciously or unconsciously.
"It’s the least we can do to honor not just George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and Eric Garner, but all the black men and women who have been killed when a camera wasn’t rolling. (sic)"