Kate Mara

Kate Mara is an American actor best known for her roles in the shows House of Cards, 24 and American Horror Story. She has also appeared in several films including Brokeback Mountain, Transcendence, The Martian and 2015’s Fantastic Four.

Why Kate Mara is vegan

Kate Mara is vegan for the animals and for health.

Kate originally became a vegetarian in her teens when she saw trucks crammed full of chickens on their way to be slaughtered.¹Flink, T. 2023. Actress Kate Mara on Activism, Family, and Vegan Parenting. VegNews. Available: https://vegnews.com/kate-mara-activism-vegan-parenting [Accessed 11 August 2026]. She later ditched the dairy and adopted a plant-based diet for health reasons in 2013 after reading The Beauty Detox Solution by Kimberly Snyder.²O’Brien, P. 2018. Why Actress Kate Mara Decided to Go Vegan. Shape. Available: https://www.shape.com/celebrities/interviews/why-kate-mara-decided-go-vegan [Accessed 4 March 2021]. In a 2018 interview with USA Today, she stated the importance of making conscious and compassionate choices.³USA Today. 2018. Kate Mara is vegan, her husband isn’t – how they make it work. Video. Available: https://www.usatoday.com/videos/life/weekend/health/2018/07/26/kate-mara-vegan-her-husband-isnt-how-they-make-work/37121497/ [Accessed 4 March 2021].

The documentary Blackfish ignited the activist within Kate Mara. After watching the film, she joined campaigns against keeping orcas in captivity, including calls to free Tilikum, the orca who was imprisoned at SeaWorld and featured in the film. In 2019, Kate and other stars, signed a petition urging President Putin to release trapped orcas and beluga whales back into the Sea of Okhotsk.⁴Choriando, M. 2019. Vegan Kate Mara Urges Putin To Release Captive Whales Into Wild. Plant Based News. Available: https://plantbasednews.org/news/vegan-kate-mara-urges-putin-release-captive-whales/ [Accessed 4 March 2021]. She has since worked with a number of animal rights organisations.

Kate Mara is keeping veganism within the family. Her younger sister Rooney is also vegan and Kate is raising her two children as vegans. Being a parent has strengthened her vegan resolve: “Being a parent gives me more passion and drive for animals, like children need our voice in so many ways as well and obviously animals really do.”⁵Flink, T. 2023. Actress Kate Mara on Activism, Family, and Vegan Parenting. VegNews. Available: https://vegnews.com/kate-mara-activism-vegan-parenting [Accessed 11 August 2026].

“Just miles and miles of these awful coops, chickens living in cages and that’s their life. I was so disturbed by it, I decided I didn’t want to eat meat ever again.”⁶Pringle, G. 2014. House of Cards’ Kate Mara: ‘It is complicated being compared to my sister Rooney’. The Independent. Available: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/house-of-card-s-kate-mara-it-is-complicated-being-compared-to-my-sister-kate-rooney-9281446.html [Accessed 4 March 2021].