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It’s safe to assume only the most dedicated of industry savants pulled The Minus Man from their memory as Sheryl Crow bantered on stage about being in the 1999 serial-killer film with Dennis Haysbert at Oceana’s SeaChange party in Laguna Beach on Aug. 18.
Haysbert, a surfer and deep-sea scuba diver, was the emcee (“A healthy ocean is every child’s inheritance”) and Crow the entertainment for the evening expected to raise $1 million for Oceana, the world’s largest international organization dedicated to saving the world’s oceans through science-based policy campaigns. Recent victories include convincing the European Union and Chile to pass legislation this year to protect threatened fisheries and the U.S. government to protect turtle nesting habitat.
“I’m looking for someone who drives a hybrid, is registered to vote, has a job and his own money — or at least won’t spend all of mine,” Crow told the crowd as she introduced one of her songs.
STORY: Philanthropy Issue: Hollywood’s 5 Top Donors in 2013
The event draws an eclectic mix of O.C. philanthropists, global environmentalists and L.A. industry members, including Oceana board member Ted Danson, who brought wife Mary Steenburgen to the event for the first time. When Crow flubbed a chord, she said the song needed Steenburgen on accordion, her second obscure film reference of the night (The Grass Harp, in which Steenburgen plays an accordion-playing evangelist). Others who made the trek down from L.A., braving the O.C.’s own version of Carmageddon (the 405 was closed completely over the weekend as a bridge was demolished), to gather at the private hillside estate were Anne Heche and James Tupper, Emily Osment (Hannah Montana), Anna Torv (Fringe and Ryan Murphy’s HBO pilot Open), manager/producer and Oceana’s board of directors president Keith Addis and vintage fashion guru Cameron Silver.
The Office stars Oscar Nunez and Angela Kinsey clowned around to help raise cash, offering up play dates with their kids and stuffed dolphins in exchange for donations. Perhaps the most moving moment during the sixth annual O.C. summer soirée came when siblings Alexandra Cousteau and the stunningly handsome Philippe Cousteau Jr. recited a eulogy their grandfather, pioneering filmmaker Jacques Cousteau, read at their father’s funeral.
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