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Daryl Hannah is perhaps best known as the mermaid from Splash or one-eyed kung-fu fighter Elle Driver in the Kill Bill movies -- but she is also known for her passionate environmental activism. Hannah is so passionate about the environment, in fact, that she was among the 100 people arrested on Tuesday for participating in a sit-in in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., protesting the expansion of a pipeline carrying oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. (Watch footage of her arrest below.)
"I do believe we are in a time of crisis for so many things," Hannah, 50, told People, after paying a fine and being released. "And in times of crisis, you have to get engaged in the process. You have to walk your talk. Being arrested is something you never hope for. You don't want to get arrested. But you know it's a risk you take."
Hannah also pointed out that "civil disobedience is a long-heralded American tradition" -- and she clearly believes strongly in that tradition. She's been arrested twice before for participating in environmental protests: once for climbing a tree in a community garden in Los Angeles to protest the fact that it was being demolished to make room for a warehouse, and the other time for protesting coal mining in West Virginia.
The protest on Tuesday was a small one as protests go, only 100 people, but Hannah believes they represent the will of the American public. "The majority of people who got arrested with me were moms, grandmothers and school teachers," said Hannah. "Like me, they are standing up against this big corporation and saying, 'No.'"
The expansion of the pipeline, which now ends in Oklahoma, is expected to be approved by the State Department by the end of the year. If it does go through, the expansion would make the pipeline 1,600 miles long -- one of the biggest in the country, according to CNN.
"Tar sands are the worst environmental atrocity," Hannah said of the dangers of the expansion. "This pipeline would extend over the nation's largest freshwater aquafiers that 20 million people depend on for water. A third of the nation's irrigation water comes from there. What's going to happen when that pipeline leaks? We can't take that risk."
