Jane Fonda, Mark Ruffalo and 200+ actors tell their pension to retire Big Oil

This morning more than 200 actors, led by Jane Fonda, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, Rosario Dawson, Laurence Fishburne and Mark Hamill, asked the trustees of their own pension plan to stop investing in Big Oil.¹² The campaign is called Retire Big Oil. We made the film, the brand, the website and the social kit, with Stand.earth running the campaign and the press, and Sphere doing the math on what the pension actually owns.

Hollywood’s pension holds $100 million in oil and gas

Most actors never see where their pension money goes. It goes to the SAG-Producers Pension Plan, a fund of about $5 billion that covers more than 65,000 participants. According to an analysis by Sphere, at least $100 million of it sits directly in fossil fuel companies.¹²

That is an awkward fact for a union whose best-known members have spent years marching, testifying and posting about climate. It is also a bad bet on its own terms. Over the last decade, fossil fuels were the worst-performing sector of the stock market, behind tech, healthcare, utilities and everything else, according to S&P Global’s sector indexes.

And it landed close to home. In January, the Los Angeles wildfires burned more than 50,000 acres, killed at least 29 people and forced hundreds of thousands to evacuate, in the town where many of these actors live and work.²

The ask is plain. The open letter, sent to the plan’s trustees and copied to the SAG-AFTRA board, asks them to divest from fossil fuel companies, including extraction and pipelines, and to put at least 10% of that money into climate-safe, socially responsible funds within five years.²

It also asks for more openness with members about where their money goes. The campaign joins Stand.earth’s Climate Safe Pensions Network.

The idea: let actors confess, in their own kitchens

Another report would have been ignored. So we built the campaign around the people who have the most to lose and the biggest audiences to tell: the union’s own members. We wrote a short script and asked actors to film it themselves, at home, on their phones.

Every take opens the same way, eyes to the lens: “I’ve got to confess something. I’m invested in Big Oil.” The launch film cuts together footage from ten of them, including Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon and John Leguizamo, and lands on a line that does the arguing for us: “We’re all proud members of SAG-AFTRA, but we are literally forced to give our money to Big Oil.”³

Make Big Oil into small oil.

That line, and the identity around it, set the tone for everything else. The wordmark’s “Big Oil” shimmers like a slick on a puddle. Dark skies and green hills sit side by side, the world we have and the one the money could build. The posts are short, a little cheeky and easy to share: “F#@&. I’m invested in Big Oil.”

Two hundred names, and a few lines worth repeating

The first names went up on RetireBigOil.org over the weekend. By launch the letter carried more than 200, and the list reads like an awards-season seating chart: Sally Field, Ted Danson, Edward Norton, Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen, Zooey Deschanel, Danny DeVito, Josh Brolin, Alyssa Milano, Debra Messing, Patton Oswalt and Adam McKay among them.⁴⁵

Several wrote their own lines for the campaign. Jane Fonda tied it to the award her union gave her. Mark Hamill reached for a movie-business metaphor. Don Cheadle made the case on the numbers, and on who pays first.²³

Cheadle told ESG Dive that he has “seen how fossil fuel pollution hits Black and Brown communities first and worst,” and that divesting “isn’t only the right thing to do morally, it’s also financially responsible for workers and retirees.”² Mark Ruffalo, who first pressed the pension’s leadership about its fossil fuel holdings last fall, kept his to seven words on the sign-up page: “We’ve marched, we’ve spoken out. Now let’s divest.”⁵

What we built for launch day

The film was one piece of a kit designed so that anyone, famous or not, could join in under a minute. RetireBigOil.org opens on a blunt headline, “You’re invested in Big Oil,” with a sign-the-letter form beside it. One click separates SAG-AFTRA members from supporters, so the trustees can see who is asking. Performance graphs over 10, 15 and 20 years show what the fossil fuel bet has cost.

Behind the site sit two toolkits: a VIP kit for SAG members with ready-to-post quote cards and video prompts, and a general kit with posts anyone can share. Each card puts a familiar face next to one plain ask. Every visitor gets three ways in: sign the letter, share a post, or record their own read of the confession.

The campaign’s most surprising number made it into the kit too. Moving your retirement money out of fossil fuels cuts more carbon than the green habits most people already know.³

Launch morning, by the minute

Bloomberg had the story first, at 9 a.m. Eastern.¹ Stand.earth’s release followed a minute later, and by the next day Pensions & Investments, ESG Dive and Australia’s Financial Standard had picked it up.⁶²⁷ Stand.earth’s executive director, Todd Paglia, framed it for the trade press: “This fossil fuel divestment call is coming from working artists and creators who are the foundation of the labor union.”²

The letter is open and the counter is running. Sign it, share a card, or film your own confession at RetireBigOil.org.