The Socially Responsible Cast of The Hunger Games

Truth be told I do honestly believe that the collection of people who make up the cast of The Hunger Games franchise, are a special group of people. And no, not because they portray the myriad of characters created by Suzanne Collins, that would be just too damn easy. It’s because despite the odds a hefty amount of the cast are socially responsible with their time and their extracurricular activities. Wow, social responsibility isn’t exactly glamorous, or in the case of this site’s particular bent, it’s not very funny– but dammit, it’s important.

Josh Hutcherson, our Peeta, is probably the most vocally and charismatically socially responsible out of the cast so far. Today in promotion for the upcoming release of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Josh did an interview and a photo-shoot with Out Magazine, which you can read here. Hopefully we all know by now that Josh is a major advocate for the LBGTQ community, and he has been since he was a just

Josh looking mighty punk, but with a purpose in Out Magazine

a little kid. However, unlike so many people of his generation he doesn’t just “talk the talk”, he actually started a charitable organization dedicated specifically to bridging the gap between the straight community and the LBGTQ community, and most remarkably he co-founded his organization years before he even turned 21 years of age (his 21st birthday is this Saturday). It all started for him because of a tragedy. It’s a sad story, but one worth telling and retelling, Josh’s mother’s uncle was gay, he was much loved by his family, but unfortunately before Josh was born he died of the AIDS virus. Josh never knew his uncle, but because his mother spoke so lovingly, and openly about him and her beliefs towards being all inclusive and non judgmental, Josh grew up to be that way as well. A million billion hats off to Josh Hutcherson on his expansive ability to not be a Judge-y McJudgerson, and also saying that one solution to the whole love triangle problem in The Hunger Games trilogy is for Gale, Peeta, and Katniss to form a triad. Gotta love a guy who thinks his character just needs to be more sexually adventurous to solve all his problems.

Now you didn’t think I was just going to talk about Hutcherson, did you? Nuh uh, ’cause we’ve got more people in the cast who (gonna use another cliche phrase now), “puts his money where his mouth is.” Bruno Gunn goes against almost all the character traits that his character Brutus is known for, sure he looks rather intimidating, but I don’t really think it’s in his nature to, well… murder people. He’s always on Twitter replying to fans, Instagraming, being inclusive and just simply a nice person, but his “niceness,” doesn’t end in cyberspace, nope not at all. A couple of weeks ago Bruno flew all the way back home to Ohio and hosted a charity event for Pathway Caring for Children, a non-profit organization out of the Cleveland, Ohio area that deals with abused and neglected children in The Foster System. Both are subjects that don’t get enough attention pretty much everywhere, and I’m sure he felt honored to do his part by bringing more attention to it by using his pull of being part of the cast, and a bit of a local celebrity. “I think what I learned the most from this experience is that sometimes we think it’s only the big things that are the most helpful, but it’s really the most everyday, and the most simple.” Said by Bruno himself, and conveniently ripped by me from his Facebook page. I even know for a fact that several donations came in specifically because people knew he was part of the cast of The Hunger Games. Face it, that’s kind of awesome in and of its self. Sometimes charity isn’t doing a lot though not even hosting an event or donating large sums of money, sometimes it’s just buying a pair of shoes for a Foster kid, or donating your time to an after school program. I even saw several week ago that our totally not brutal Brutus bought a homeless guy lunch, just some random person he ran into who needed help. If that’s not socially responsible, I don’t know what is.

I was this close to writing about Barbies.

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