Do we like Susan Sarandon?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Decades on the right side of causes that cost her something, with one badly phrased 2023 remark and nothing harmful since that we could find.
Susan Sarandon was born in 1946 and grew up in New Jersey. She broke through in the 1970s with The Rocky Horror Picture Show and went on to five Oscar nominations. She finally won Best Actress for Dead Man Walking in 1995, and the New Jersey Hall of Fame inducted her in 2010.
The story people argue about began in November 2023. At a pro-Palestinian rally in New York she said that “a lot of people” fear being Jewish right now, and that they were getting a taste of what it is like to be Muslim in the US. Agency UTA dropped her soon after, and critics called the comments antisemitic. She apologised, calling her phrasing “a terrible mistake”.
On the harm test, that remark is the one real stain. It was a clumsy line about a group of people, and she has said sorry for it. We found no pattern of attacks on LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet in what we read. She has been arrested at protests against family separations at the border. Her Gaza advocacy is contested: supporters see principle, critics see something else, and where you land depends on which you read it as.
The recent news is more of the same. At Venice in September 2026 she said agencies are still telling people not to hire her, which is her own account and not something independently established. On 24 September she was photographed in handcuffs at a UN protest, one of about 100 people detained, and the report we read named no charges. Her rep did not comment.
The good stuff is long and costs her something. She was among roughly 575 people charged with unlawfully demonstrating at a 2018 Senate building protest over family separations, and police processed and released them. Spain's film academy named her its 2026 International Goya recipient, citing her social and political commitment. She has been the same loud, unfashionable voice for decades.
So: not perfect, but not harmful either. She said one thing badly, apologised, and has since kept doing what she was already doing, standing with the people she thinks are being squeezed. That passes with an asterisk. She will keep losing the odd role, and her fans will keep loving her for it.