World famous celebrities in love with Cambodia

PHNOM PENH (Cambodia Herald) - Looking back into its history, Cambodia used to be an attractive destination for world celebrities and politicians, thanks to its beautiful landscapes and politically and economically stable situation. 

Due to war, Cambodia lost its charm for many decades. Now, however, its reputation has been revived, making it a place to which world-class celebrities pay visit.

Who are the celebrities visiting Cambodia?  According to Discover magazine, the celebrities who visit Cambodia these days include award-winning actress Angelina Jolie, martial arts movie star Jackie Chan and Latin American pop star Ricky Martin. 

They are following in the footsteps of Charlie Chaplin, one of the most famous comedians in the world who visited in the early 20th century.

ANGELINA JOLIE

 The award-winning actress first visited Cambodia during filming for Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and a long love affair flowered from there on. She adopted her first son, Maddox, from Cambodia back in 2002, setting up the Maddox Jolie Project in his honour in 2003 (renamed the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation in 2007), which is devoted to helping those in extreme poverty, protecting natural resources and conserving wildlife in Battambang. 

Jolie first became personally aware of worldwide humanitarian crises while filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) in Cambodia. She contacted the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for information on international trouble spots. To learn more about the conditions in these areas, Jolie began visiting refugee camps around the world. In February 2001, she went on her first field visit, an 18-day mission to Sierra Leone and Tanzania; she later expressed her shock at what she had witnessed.

In the following months, she returned to Cambodia for two weeks and met with Afghan refugees in Pakistan. She covered all costs related to her missions and shared the same rudimentary working and living conditions as UNHCR field staff on all of her visits. Jolie was named a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva on August 27, 2001.

JACKIE CHAN

Martial arts movie star Chan is fast becoming a ‘Cambodiaphile’, enjoying his third visit to the country in 2009. He arrived as a goodwill ambassador for Unicef , noting “how warm and friendly” the Cambodian people are. Chan crammed a lot into his most recent visit, discussing the possibility of making a film in the kingdom, meeting students at the International School of Phnom Penh and giving a talk at University of Cambodia, where he was also awarded an honorary doctorate of humanity.

Jackie Chan was born Chan Kong-sang, 7 April 1954. He is a Hong Kong actor, action choreographer, comedian, director, producer, martial artist, screenwriter, entrepreneur, singer and stunt performer. In his movies, he is known for his acrobatic fighting style, comic timing, use of improvised weapons, and innovative stunts. Jackie Chan has been acting since the 1960s and has appeared in over 100 films.

Chan has received stars on the Hong Kong Avenue of Stars and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. As a cultural icon, Chan has been referenced in various pop songs, cartoons and video games. An operatically trained vocalist, Chan is also a Cantopop and Mandopop star, having released a number of albums and sung many of the theme songs for the films in which he has starred.

RICKY MARTIN 

The Latin American pop star visited Cambodia in 2008 in order to promote the fight against human trafficking. The cause is strongly supported by the star’s own charity, the Ricky Martin Foundation, and during the trip, Martin met with victims of human trafficking in Siem Reap, including a 14-year-old rape victim who performed a song she had composed about her ordeal.

Enrique "Ricky" Martín Morales was born on December 24, 1971. He is better known as Ricky Martin. He is a Puerto Rican and Spanish pop singer and actor who achieved prominence, first as a member of the Latin boy band Menudo, then as a solo artist since 1991.

During his career he has sold more than 60 million album copies worldwide. He is the founder of Ricky Martin Foundation, a non-profit charity organization. Ricky Martin's exuberant 1999 single "Livin' la Vida Loca" made him a prominent figure of Latin dance-pop.

CHARLIE CHAMPLIN

Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, was born 16 April 1889 and died on 25 December 1977. He was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I. Chaplin used mime, slapstick and other visual comedy routines, and continued well into the era of the talkies, though his films decreased in frequency from the end of the 1920s. His most famous role was that of The Tramp, which he first played in the Keystone comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice in 1914. 

From the April 1914 one-reeler Twenty Minutes of Love onwards he was writing and directing most of his films. By 1916 he was also producing them, and from 1918 he was even composing the music for them. With Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith, he co-founded United Artists in 1919.

Chaplin was one of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. He was influenced by his predecessor, the French silent film comedian Max Linder, to whom he dedicated one of his films.

His working life in entertainment spanned over 75 years, from the Victorian stage and the music hall in the United Kingdom as a child performer, until close to his death at the age of 88. His high-profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. 

Chaplin's identification with the left ultimately forced him to resettle in Europe during the McCarthy era in the early 1950s. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Chaplin the 10th greatest male screen legend of all time.

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