Bonnie Wright is currently participating in the annual
Live Below the Line week challenge, where she and others eat food worth £1/$1.25 a day - the same amount that over 1.2 billion survive on daily. The
Harry Potter actress became an ambassador for the
Global Poverty Project to raise awareness on levels of poverty suffered around the world.
Bonnie spoke to
Metro recently about her diet regime for the challenge, which she took part in last year as well, and what it means to bring attention to such a terrible crisis. A new photo shoot featuring Bonnie for the publication, by Chris Brock, can be seen here. For more on LBL and how to help, head
here.
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‘Before we start to tackle extreme poverty we need to understand what it is,’ she says. ‘People underestimate how much planning the challenge takes. If you don’t plan, you’ll have a very difficult five days. The mistake I made when I did the challenge last year was not having enough variety – if you just have soup for five days, it becomes very repetitive.’
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‘When you’re living on such basic nutrition it affects your concentration, your work, how energised you are,’ she says. ‘It also limits you in terms of your freedom – whether you go and hang out in a coffee shop or go out in the evening. Every day has to be thought through.’
‘I’ve never been someone who’s wasted food,’ says Wright. ‘It was a big thing when I was young. My parents never did a huge weekend shop. They bought by the day and had that European idea of buying fresh food more regularly. That’s very much the way I shop now – where I am changes all the time and I only really ever buy for that day.’
‘A lot of the time it’s eating out, or when I’m out in the day, buying lunch, visiting sandwich shops – all those things are cumulative.
‘Doing this challenge puts things into perspective – how you just don’t think about how the small amounts of money add up.’ So what does Wright think she’ll miss the most?
‘I usually drink quite a lot of tea and coffee,’ she says. ‘Also, not having the freedom to go out and meet friends. It’s just easier to be at home – you realise how simplified your life has to become.’