Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix Are Having a (Vegan) Baby

Vegan power couple Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara are reportedly expecting their first baby together.

Mara, who got engaged to Phoenix last year, “may be as far as six months along,” reports Page Six.

The duo reportedly first met while on the set of the 2013 sci-fi romance drama “Her.” In the film, Mara portrayed Phoenix’s ex-wife. However, it wasn’t until the two were reunited in 2016 to begin filming “Mary Magdalene”—in which Mara played Phoenix’s mother—that the couple began dating.

“She’s the only girl I ever looked up on the internet,” Phoenix said of Mara during an interview with Vanity Fair last fall. He added: “We were just friends, email friends. I’d never done that. Never looked up a girl online.”

Vegan Power Couple

Last month, the couple spoke out about factory farming amid COVID-19 and discussed the ongoing backlash against wet markets in an op-ed published in The Washington Post. Some experts believe the pandemic started at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China last December.

“China is hardly the only country where live animal markets and other squalid operations are common,” the couple wrote. “Some 80 of them operate within the five boroughs of New York City alone, according to Slaughter Free NYC, a nonprofit group that opposes them. They are near residences, schools and public parks.”

Earlier this year, Phoenix rescued a cow and her calf from a slaughterhouse in Southern California, just hours after giving a moving Oscars speech about the dairy industry.

“I think we’ve become very disconnected from the natural world,” he said during his speech. “We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow. And when she gives birth we steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable. And then we take her milk that’s intended for the calf and we put it in our coffee and cereal.

The “Joker” actor urged people to virtually adopt the cow and her calf—which Phoenix named “Liberty” and “Indigo,” respectively—for Mother’s Day earlier this month. The mother-and-daughter duo now live at Farm Sanctuary in Acton, California.

Vegan Celeb Parents

Phoenix and Mara won’t be the only famous celebs to raise a vegan baby.

Mara’s sister—actor and model Kate Mara—and her husband, British actor Jamie Bell, welcomed their first child together in May of last year. Although Bell isn’t vegan, the couple celebrated their daughter’s first birthday in true vegan fashion. They ordered a vegan strawberry shortcake from Just What I Kneaded bakery in Los Angeles.

Vegan entrepreneur and tattoo artist Kat Von D and her husband, Prayers singer Leafar Seyer (aka Rafael Reyes), announced the birth of their vegan baby in December 2018. “Meet our beautiful baby boy,” Von D wrote on Instagram alongside a photo of Seyer holding the newborn, Leafar.

Award-winning actors Kimberly Elise and Alicia Silverstone have also been vocal about raising their children on a vegan diet.