Body Shop Founder & Environmental Campaigner Anita Roddick 1942-2007 Interview video

Body Shop Founder & Environmental Campaigner Anita Roddick 1942-2007:

Anita Roddick, the founder of the cosmetics firm The Body Shop, would have turned 65 years old tomorrow. She died last month of a brain hemorrhage. Roddick was a well-known environmental campaigner and a pioneer of cruelty-free beauty products. Anita Roddick founded The Body Shop in 1976. The company gained enormous success and grew to 2,000 stores spanning 50 countries.

All the while Roddick remained a committed and outspoken activist. She was involved in a range of movements, from opposing animal testing, corporate globalization and war, to supporting indigenous rights and political prisoners. The daughter of Italian immigrants in Britain, she pioneered notions of social and environmental responsibility in the business world and was knighted Dame Anita Roddick by the Queen of England in 2003. Ralph Nader described her as "a glorious combination of character and personality who had her priorities high and wide enough to ask the most fundamental questions of big business and answer them by her deeds and her words."

In October of 2001, filmmaker Mark Achbar interviewed Anita Roddick in Seattle, Washington. Parts of this interview were used in Achbar's 2003 documentary film "The Corporation." Here are some excerpts from the interview aired on Democracy Now Oct 22nd 2007