PICTURES: See the Most Politically Effective Celebs

By Julia Edwards

Updated: April 30, 2011 | 10:45 a.m.
April 28, 2011 | 4:59 p.m.

US actor George Clooney signs autographs during the Summit of the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, 13 December 2007 in Rome. US actor George Clooney accepts the Peace Summit award for their efforts in trying to alleviate the suffering of the victims of Sudan's Darfur region. (AFP PHOTO / ANDREAS SOLARO)

Politics has always known its share of drama, so it makes sense that those who are dramatic by profession would have a magical pull on the public. Leading up to the culmination of the Washington-Hollywood connection, the White House Correspondents Association Dinner on April 30, National Journal investigated the habits of the most effective celebrity advocates, based on the take of political insiders and in-house analysts. National Journal Editorial Director Ronald Brownstein explores this relationship in his book, The Power and the Glitter: The Hollywood-Washington Connection and, in this week's magazine, presented the top 20 most effective celebrities of all time.

See which celebs Republican and Democrats insiders most dream about in helping today's campaigns, see Chuck Norris, Oprah, Bruce Springsten and other top campaign celebrites: here.

Read: The NJ 20

The 20 Most Politically Effective Celebrities of All Time

<p>Warren Beatty: Beatty helped to define the new opportunities available to Hollywood stars in the 1970s, usually out of the spotlight. He filled multiple roles for Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern in 1972, from fundraisers to picking a running mate, and encouraged Gary Hart to show more emotion during his 1984 presidential bid.</p>

<p>Henry Belafonte: The singer and actor used his star power to support the civil rights movement in the 1950s and ‘60s. He once led a delegation of students to the White House to urge President Eisenhower to integrate schools and bailed out Martin Luther King Jr. from the Birmingham, Ala., jail; later, he served as a liaison between King and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as King and the less patient groups to his left.</p>

<p>Bono: Among political insiders polled by National Journal, Bono ranked most effective at influencing the current political scene. His advocacy work, most prominently debt relief and poverty issues in the developing world, reaches both right (George W. Bush and Sen. Jesse Helms) and left (Bill Clinton and Bill Gates). As one Democratic insider put it, “Anyone who could make Jesse Helms cry and then attend a U2 concert is an effective lobbyist.”</p> - Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

<p>George Clooney: Clooney seems to back issues before parties, and violence in Darfur is the issue closest to Clooney’s heart. Although he supports President Obama, he was not visible during his campaign. National Journal’s insiders found Clooney almost equally effective, ranking third among Democrats and fourth among Republicans.</p> - Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images

<p>Melvyn and Helen Gahagan Douglas: Melvyn Douglas spearheaded anti-Nazi efforts in Hollywood and in 1938 organized the Motion Picture Democratic Committee. Helen Gahagan Douglas was a tireless organizer for FDR and served three terms in Congress from California before losing the 1950 Senate race to Richard Nixon (who unfairly labeled her a communist sympathizer.) </p>

<p>Michael J. Fox: Fox’s advocacy for stem-cell research since revealing his own fight with Parkinson’s in 1998 has been powerful, and he’s raised $200 million for Parkinson’s research. In 2006, he helped Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., win her seat in the Senate with a promotional video where Fox shook violently. Above, Fox campaigns for Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia in 2006.</p> - Alex Wong/Getty Images

<p>Bob Geldof: Geldof was arguably <em>the</em> pop-music fundraiser of the ‘80s, organizing the Band-Aid benefit “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” broke sales records) and the mammoth Live Aid concerts, for which he was knighted. Twenty years later, Geldof returned with his “Live 8” concerts to encourage the Group of Eight industrial countries then meeting to increase their aid to Africa. </p>

<p> Lee Greenwood: Greenwood’s 1984 ballad “God Bless the USA” became the Republican Party’s unofficial campaign anthem. Twenty-seven percent of Republican insiders polled say Greenwood is still one of the party’s top celebrity heavyweights. Here, Greenwood sings at a fundraiser for Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin.</o>

<p>With his solemn presence and sculpted physique, Heston portrayed Michelangelo, Moses, and the very spirit of Second Amendment advocacy. As president of the National Rifle Association, Heston famously told gun-control advocates that, in order to make him give up his rifle, they would have to pry it “from my cold, dead hands.” However, he had a political life before becoming a Goldwater conservative; the former New Dealer helped organize Hollywood’s participation in Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 March on Washington. </p>

<p>Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt: Both Jolie and Pitt have remained committed to each other and to their causes. Jolie is a good-will ambassador to the United Nations, where she advocates on behalf of refugees from Cambodia and Thailand to Sierra Leone and Darfur. Pitt, though less involved, has worked with Bono and Clooney and raised tens of millions of dollars toward rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.</p>

<p> Willie Nelson: Nelson’s hand in creating the Farm Aid concerts, which have raised tens of millions of dollars to support family farmers since 1985, proves his commitment in a world more used to flighty celebrity advocacy...never mind his support for the legalization of marijuana and Dennis Kucinich's presidential candidacy.</p>

<p>Up until his death in 2008, Newman continued to make waves in liberal politics. He supported Sen. Eugene McCarthy's challenge to President Johnson in the 1968 Democratic primary and helped launch George McGovern's campaign in 1972. Newman's style of advocacy is perhaps best known through the lens of his widespread philanthropic endeavors, funded by the proceeds of the "Newman’s Own" food line.</p>

<p>Sean Penn: Penn has staked out a position along, and sometimes over, the left flank of the political debate. Penn’s influence, though, has come more from the example he has set through his personal engagement with gritty challenges. He joined reconstruction efforts after Hurricane Katrina and established a relief organization in the wake of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, eventually enlisting as the manager of a refugee camp serving thousands of displaced people. Through such efforts, Penn has helped to set a modern model for Hollywood activism that prizes direct action over glitz.</p> - Martin Schalk/Getty Images

<p>Ronald Reagan: Long before the 40th president launched his own political career, he was a champion of the left. He was a founding member of Americans for Democratic Action and a pillar of Hollywood’s anticommunist left. His move to the right began circa his support for Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, and he never looked back as he became the American right’s leading man.</p>

<p>Robert Redford: No film star has been more closely associated with the green movement than Redford. But his awareness of the public’s limited tolerance for Hollywood’s insight on policy led him to conducting his conferences between environmentalists and industry leaders during the Reagan years in quiet. Redford did not keep quiet after the BP oil spill, however, and released a video criticizing energy companies for casting themselves as conservationists.</p> - Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

<p>Barbra Streisand: Washington saw Streisand up close early on, when she sang at the White House Correspondents Dinner at 21 in 1963. And the capital still hasn’t seen the last of her. Few stars have shown more longevity in their commitment to political causes, ranging from her endorsements of Democrats from Eugene McCarthy to Barack Obama to her opposition of nuclear power after Chernobyl and early involvement in the debate over climate change. </p>

<p>Elizabeth Taylor: Taylor’s interest in politics in the 1980s was unexpected. In the first years of the AIDS epidemic, Taylor took a stand for compassion toward victims to knock out the stigma quickly being associated with the disease. The most public example of this compassion can be found in the pictures of Taylor hugging and kissing Giant co-star Rock Hudson as he lay dying of AIDS in his hospital bed.</p> - JEROME DELAY/AFP/Getty Images

<p>John Wayne: Wayne wasn’t a regular on the campaign trail, but his few appearances echoed as a great symbol of patriotism and strength for the Republican Party. Ronald Reagan capitalized on Wayne’s legend shortly after his death by labeling the beloved cowboy as the antithesis of incumbent Jimmy Carter. “Duke Wayne did not believe our country was ready for the dustbin of history,” said Reagan in his election-eve broadcast in 1980.</p>

<p>Orson Welles: The mastermind behind Citizen Kane was a tireless campaigner for Franklin Roosevelt and backed causes from civil rights to global peace, even considering pursuing a Senate seat from California.</p>

The 20 Most Politically Effective Celebrities of All Time

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