Every hour or so, Mia Farrow gets four Google alerts relating to the search terms, "Darfur," "Central African Republic," "Eastern Chad" and "Genocide Olympics," her shorthand for China's suitability as host nation of this year's games. She is on her fourth reading of Julie Flint and Alex de Waal's primer, Darfur: A Short History of a Long War. She has been to Sudan and its neighboring countries eight times in the past five years and is planning another trip in May.
"I have no life," says Farrow, in that silvery voice that seems to self-mock and at the same time parody the expectations of those who would mock her. "This is my life. So while it may be that I'm only an actress and it may be that I'm an idiot in many aspects - but no more so than half the population - I have earned some stripes, if hours of study count. Yes, I am a celebrity, so take it with a grain. But I'm also a messenger. I'm also a witness."
Three weeks ago, her message was amplified by Steven Spielberg's decision to resign as artistic adviser to the opening ceremony in Beijing; almost a year after Farrow compared the Hollywood director to Leni Riefenstahl in an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal. "China," she wrote, "is bankrolling Darfur's genocide," and Spielberg was a "key collaborator" for agreeing to work with it. Since then she has written six more articles, lobbied the Olympic sponsors to tear up their contracts, offered to exchange places with an incarcerated Sudanese rebel, and urged those heads of government planning to attend the games, Gordon Brown included, to think better of it. Of Spielberg she says, "I gather he's quite annoyed with me."
Indifference is the enemy of any cause, but Farrow suffers from its opposite: the fame that gives her a platform, also prejudices how what she says is received. Even Farrow has to admit that her reputation is a little funky.
In a cafe in New York, she hauls out her laptop to show me photos taken on her last trip to Darfur and, with a smile, tells me of a dream she had in which she relocated to an underwater kingdom, was elected leader of the dolphins and had to give a presentation for which the only device that could withstand the conditions was the latest Macbook.
The UN estimates that at least 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur in the past five years in the conflict - between the government-backed Janjaweed militias and rebel groups - that has also displaced 2.5 million people. Of course, says Farrow, the blame lies squarely with Khartoum, but in line with a growing consensus in the west, she adds, Beijing has "under-written" the atrocities. China is Sudan's biggest buyer of oil. It has sold Khartoum millions of US dollars worth of weapons and has used its veto in the security council to frustrate UN action within the region.
It was a piece by Samantha Power in the New York Times that first brought Darfur to her attention. "It was just one of those jaw-dropping moments and I realized that there was a genocide ongoing in a region that I had never heard of - I started looking for information."
Before writing about him in the Wall Street Journal, Farrow sent Spielberg three letters explaining the situation and urging him to use his "unique point of leverage" to put pressure on Beijing. If he's annoyed one imagines it is owing to the parallels she drew with one of Hitler's favorite filmmakers. Some might call this intemperate.
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