College dropout Lucy Lawless assesses the climate science debate for us: "The scientists have been screaming about this for 15 years, and of late, it's unanimous – there's only a few wackos who deny climate change"

Saturday interview: Lucy Lawless – Xena the Ecowarrior | From the Guardian | The Guardian

But for all her friendly ease and good humour (Lawless leads a charmed life and she knows it), about climate change she is deadly serious, and her voice rises and changes when she talks about it. "It was interesting to see so many educated people so universally dejected," she says of Rio, "they were obviously completely bummed out and I've never really seen that. Only the politicians were saying [she puts on a pompous deep voice], 'It's pretty good that we came to any kind of consensus', and everybody else was saying, 'No, that's BS [bullshit] and you guys once again have let us down. You know what, the overwhelming message that came out of this was that we're on our own, and governments are rubbish."

Given her views of political leaders, it is no surprise to find that Lawless has no time for those who mock celebrity activists as attention-seekers. "Here's the weird thing. The scientists have been screaming about this for 15 years, and of late, it's unanimous – there's only a few wackos who deny climate change – but nobody listened..."

...She puts her green awareness down to two events. The first was the ozone hole that developed in the southern hemisphere as a result of CFCs and has led to New Zealand and Australia having the highest levels of skin cancer in the world. The second was New Orleans, where she was filming a made-for-TV movie when Hurricane Katrina hit.

...About 10 years ago Lawless ditched her car, a purple Mercedes with the biggest engine you could buy. "Man, I loved that car." She sniffs. More recently she downsized her house, so that the family now has just a small apartment in Los Angeles as well as their main home in Auckland

LOTOLUX - LUCY LAWLESS BIOGRAPHY

She studied foreign languages at Auckland University a year before dropping out at the age of 18, used this money to buy a one way ticket to Europe with her boyfriend, Garth Lawless, to travel to Germany and Switzerland. The couple then moved to Australia, where she worked briefly as a gold miner. At 19 Lucy fell pregnant and returned to New Zealand where she gave birth to her daughter Daisy.

After the birth of her daughter Lucy returned to work, TV commercials, writing and acting in plays, and 2 and a half seasons in 'Funny Business' before moving to Vancouver to attend the William B. Davis Centre for Actors Study.