Environmental biologist and conservationist Elissa Sursara may be rolling up her khaki sleeves and putting the orangu-tans on hold to star as Linka in the highly anticipated movie version of Captain Planet and the Planeteers.
Sursara, a former child actress and educational television host has as many as three million fans world wide supporting her work as an environmental conservationist.
Her professional associates include the WWF and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
Sursara, who had extra and small speaking roles in television shows American Gothic, Touched by an Angel and The Screening as a child has not actively sought an acting role for several years but did express an interest in using "appropriate opportunities" to further her professional work.
"I know an amount of people in the entertainment industry," she said in 2009. "A lot of people with a public figure position think outside the box and make cameos to expand themselves and bring about more awareness. It could be fun to experiment with something like that."
Sursara's celebrity has seen the transformation of her scientific conservation into world wide activism, but claims the role has the same downfall as any other.
"The more people know about you, the more you've opened yourself up to an attack," she said, regarding gossip and exaggerations about her personal life.
In 2011, the international media reported that Sursara was under suicide watch in an Australian hospital. In 2010, the conservationist was reported to have married long-time boyfriend and dolphin activist Lincoln O'Barry in a Balinese ceremony and earlier this year, a rumor circulated that Sursara had disappeared, and that an imposter had assumed her identity in order to sabotage the environmental movement and it's activists.
Sursara said the gossip has little bearing on her work.
"It's not professional to say those things and it's not professional to believe those things," she said.
In adittion to Captain Planet, Sursara is rumored to be working on her own reality television series documenting her life and work as a conservationist.
