[Image: Shannon Elizabeth Foundation/ Facebook]
Shannon Elizabeth had hearts racing in 1999 as American Pie‘s beautiful exchange student, Nadia. But in recent years, the actress has found meaning in another passion project, right here in South Africa.
Speaking to a crowd at Steel City Con, Elizabeth said she moved to South Africa eight years ago to work on her conservation charity, the Shannon Elizabeth Foundation.
After American Pie, she said, “I started my charity, which was called Animal Avengers at the time. And it’s been going since then, it’s just morphed over the years into conservation and wildlife from dogs and cats.”
“We have a blind black rhino we’ve been taking care of, and we’re going to bring in more rhinos as soon as we can do an expansion.”
“We’re building a sanctuary.”
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Elizabeth, 51, followed American Pie with Scary Movie (2000), Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001), Thirteen Ghosts (2001), Love Actually (2003) and Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (2019). She also had a recurring role on That ’70s Show, starred on the UPN series Cuts and appeared on season 6 of Dancing with the Stars and Celebrity Big Brother, in addition to returning for American Pie 2 (2001) and American Reunion (2012).
While Shannon had always been passionate about animal rights, she previously said that it wasn’t until she landed her role in the 1999 comedy that she could finally “start giving back.”
“I started looking at dog and cat rescues in LA because dogs were what I knew,” she shared. “I realised I want to make my own organisation, and over time, I just wanted to help out more animals on a bigger scale. I went on a journey of figuring out what that was and realized there was this hectic poaching crisis going on in other parts of the world.”
These days, Shannon seems to be playing the leading lady part in husband @conservationguy Simon Borchert’s life.
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South Africa’s conservation efforts need all the help they can get, so well done, Shannon, and welcome to Mzansi!
