Elaine Hendrix

By Carole Raphaelle Davis
Photos by Heather Green

I had lunch in a West Hollywood café with actress Elaine Hendrix, and I think she charmed the paint off the walls. She has a disarming way of looking at you sideways with a foxy sparkle in her eyes. She also charmed the tongue-tied waiter as she ordered her vegetarian meal, and she charmed the people sitting near us, who completely ignored each other in order to listen to our conversation. Later, as we stepped out onto Santa Monica Boulevard, a bus driver was so distracted by her natural beauty that he swerved the city bus he was driving to avoid a pile-up.

She's tall, she's blonde; she has a hot body and a hot career to match. A versatile comedienne, Elaine brings some zest and fizz to the tired cliché of the bitch, creating the hilariously detestable characters we all enjoyed in Saturday Night Live's "Superstar," The Parent Trap, and Romy and Michele's High School Reunion.

Elaine is busy with exciting new projects. "I've got nine movies coming out," she says. One of them is the highly anticipated Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2, of which she states, "Of course, I'm using this as a platform for reaching out to kids about pet adoption." She prefaced that statement with "of course" because, for those of us who know her well in the animal protection movement, it's a given that she would utilize her fame to help homeless shelter Chihuahuas get adopted.

Elaine is a member of the Board of Directors of In Defense of Animals, a national, non-profit animal welfare organization, and she's featured in the new documentary film about the fur industry, Skin Trade. You can be sure that in the side-splittingly funny scene where Elaine is choking on a lizard in The Parent Trap, the lizard who was lucky enough to be Elaine's co-star was not hurt in the making of that movie.

She hails from Morristown, Tennessee, and Elaine often travels back to her home state to help animals. She told me of the Young-Williams Animal Center in Knoxville, an organization she ardently supports. "They get thirty to ninety animals every single day and they work with rescue groups to find them permanent homes," she said. "I commend them because they are doing some amazing things with outreach programs in the community. I do public service announcements for them and help spread the word. In rural Tennessee, they kind of leave dogs outside to fend for themselves. Not to cast judgment on anyone, but the number one problem is that they [the animals] are out breeding. We don't need that to happen if we're euthanizing as many as six million animals every year in this country."

Of her home life, Elaine says, "Right now I have two dogs and two cats; all, of course, rescued. My original girl is a cattle dog. We just celebrated our ten-year anniversary together. She's gorgeous, Tiloc is her name, and she's extraordinarily smart. She knows how to herd sheep."

"You have sheep in your house?" I asked. "No," she answered, jokingly. "I wish I did! My ultimate goal in life? To have goats. I want that more than anything"”more than world peace. My other dog is Rossmore," Elaine adds. "I picked him up off the street"”Rossmore Avenue in Hollywood. He was skinny, cut up, bleeding. He's a Jindo. Nobody ever claimed him; he hadn't been neutered and he'd been out on the streets a long time to be that skinny. Now he's filled out and has a shiny coat. Rossmore will spoon with me all day long. He's my lover-boy."

The last time I saw Elaine, she joined a march of 90 animal activists against puppy mills in the Westside Pavilion, a mall in the heart of Los Angeles. She was part of a landmark protest for animal rights, and walked stoically alongside her colleagues in a silent vigil for justice for breeding dogs in factories. That day, she wasn't being funny"”she was a silent star with a shining heart.

For more information visit:
www.knoxpets.org
www.idausa.org
www.elainehendrix.com