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"  Laurie David, the wife of television antihero Larry David and an environmental and political activist of burgeoning influence, is not in the business of taking no for an answer. And so it is in early January when Laurie, 45, places a cell phone call to her husband&amp;#039;s assistant. She&amp;#039;s trying to schedule some time for me to interview Larry the following morning. &amp;quot;Two o&amp;#039;clock? No,&amp;quot; Laurie says into her cell phone, her tanned brow knitting with disapproval. &amp;quot;How about in the morning?&amp;quot; Morning is no good for Larry, his assistant explains. Larry has an important editing session scheduled so he can finish the season finale of his HBO hit comedy, Curb Your Enthusiasm, which will air on March 14. But Laurie knows that I have another interview set for tomorrow afternoon\u2014with super agent Ariel Emanuel\u2014and she knows this because she made that meeting happen as well. &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s see if we can do it in the morning. Why don&amp;#039;t you go ask Larry if he can switch things around,&amp;quot; she says firmly but sweetly. It&amp;#039;s as though she is offering her husband\u2014the cocreator of Seinfeld\u2014the opportunity to make the autonomous decision to do things her way. This, uh, assertiveness might also explain her success at lobbying and fundraising as a trustee of the 33-year-old liberal bastion the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the most respected environmental organizations in America. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s pushy,&amp;quot; notes Emanuel, &amp;quot;but don&amp;#039;t think of &amp;#039;pushy&amp;#039; as having a negative connotation. You have to be pushy.&amp;quot; Laurie&amp;#039;s husband chooses his words more delicately as he sits in his office the next morning. (He did postpone that editing session\u2014&amp;quot;Strangers don&amp;#039;t say no to her,&amp;quot; he says and shrugs. &amp;quot;You think a husband can?&amp;quot;) He starts with formidable, but then settles on a more descriptive term: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d say strident would be a proper word,&amp;quot; notes Larry, 56, who is not allowed to bring his golf shoes into the house lest they carry in pesticides from the golf course. He describes how each morning&amp;#039;s newspaper, with its reports about government-supported oil prospecting and automotive companies looking for loopholes in fuel-efficiency standards, provokes his wife&amp;#039;s ire. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll just be sitting there at breakfast, having a cup of coffee, reading the sports section,&amp;quot; he says, &amp;quot;and all of a sudden I&amp;#039;ll hear an outburst. I&amp;#039;ll spill coffee on myself! Dishes rattle! It&amp;#039;s seven o&amp;#039;clock in the morning and I&amp;#039;ll hear her screaming, &amp;#039;How can they do this?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Certainly, Laurie&amp;#039;s gusto is difficult to ignore. Her arrival for lunch at Sushi Roku on Ocean Drive in Santa Monica momentarily stops conversations at most of the tables in the room. In a gray Dolce and Gabbana suit and crisp pin-stripe blouse, Laurie is tall and very pretty. And before she has even reached our table, she unleashes a tirade. &amp;quot;They have great sushi here, and I hope you enjoy your lunch,&amp;quot; she says, speaking at warp speed. &amp;quot;Because after you hear what I have to tell you about mercury levels in fish, you&amp;#039;ll never be able to eat it again.&amp;quot; She then sits, almost daintily, and spreads her napkin over her lap. Waste\u2014whether it&amp;#039;s mercury in the ocean, smog in the air, or meandering chitchat\u2014is Laurie&amp;#039;s enemy. She orders lunch (a spicy tuna roll and shiitake mushrooms) before I&amp;#039;ve had a moment to open my menu, and she begins knocking out her talking points one by one before I can even press the red button on my tape recorder. &amp;quot;We have this insane dependence on oil, and the number-one reason is cars,&amp;quot; she says, her voice rising in agitation. &amp;quot;What does everyone in America own? A car. What is the quickest way to reduce our dependence on oil? Embrace hybrid technology,&amp;quot; she says, referring to the highly fuel-efficient cars that run, in part, on electricity. (On average, hybrids get up to 51 miles per gallon of gas while SUVs\u2014the bane of Laurie&amp;#039;s existence\u2014get as little as 12 mpg and can emit over five times as much pollution as regular-size vehicles.) Laurie is crusading behind the most accessible and popular hybrid car on the market, the Toyota Prius. Laurie has fixed her stare on Hollywood&amp;#039;s most coveted demographic, 18-to-32-year-olds, as the group most likely to embrace hybrid cars, and it&amp;#039;s not surprising since Laurie is a showbiz refugee. In her previous life she booked comedians for David Letterman, then managed comics such as Chris Elliott, Carol Leifer, and Jonathan Katz before becoming a Fox television executive. She&amp;#039;s expert in the art of the pitch\u2014and she knows that her &amp;quot;green&amp;quot; message is best delivered wrapped in Hollywood gold. &amp;quot;I use everything I learned in show business,&amp;quot; she says. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an authority on politics and environmental activism, is in awe. Other activists, he says, &amp;quot;should try to learn from her how to be effective. She&amp;#039;s not in a bad position to make some noise. In its fourth season, Curb Your Enthusiasm\u2014in which Larry David&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;character&amp;quot; (named Larry David) is married to an NRDC activist\u2014is the chattering class&amp;#039;s current rage. And clearly, the impact of celebrity on politics has never been more potent, what with Arnold Schwarzenegger starring as governor of California.  Perhaps most important to her effectiveness is the fact that Laurie doesn&amp;#039;t have\u2014and doesn&amp;#039;t want\u2014a career in showbiz. She has less to lose than a movie star, whose vocal political leanings can alienate moviegoers. Perhaps in an effort to protect its mass-market appeal, the old guard has receded into the political ether. &amp;quot;Warren Beatty, Barbra Streisand, even George Clooney\u2014they&amp;#039;re still active, but in the background, giving advice,&amp;quot; says Emanuel, the brother of Illinois congressman (and onetime senior aide to former president Clinton) Representative Rahm Emanuel. &amp;quot;Laurie is the new leader of her generation in that area. She&amp;#039;s not afraid to be on the line and to take the hit.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s a sentiment echoed by Laurie&amp;#039;s political mentor, Rob Reiner, who tells me he&amp;#039;s considering a run for governor of California: &amp;quot;She puts her money where her mouth is, her time where her mouth is, and her mouth where her mouth is.&amp;quot; Her outspokenness hasn&amp;#039;t come without any backlash. The conservative Washington Times characterized an event she sponsored as a lefty Hollywood &amp;quot;orgy&amp;quot;; Rush Limbaugh castigated her as being a leader of &amp;quot;Left Coast Hollywood kooks.&amp;quot; Still, it&amp;#039;s hard to imagine that her opinions or political missteps cost Larry David fans and viewers. If they&amp;#039;re not offended by his misanthropy, why would a little Democratic rhetoric bother them? Larry, himself, doesn&amp;#039;t take such a generous view. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s bad for comedy!&amp;quot; he almost shrieks when I ask him why he seems to respond tepidly to her using his Hollywood cachet for the good of the environment. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve begged her to go back to her maiden name. I don&amp;#039;t need all the attention from it,&amp;quot; he says, his voice growing exasperated. &amp;quot;Stop dragging me in!&amp;quot; (He might be kidding, but he might be serious.) Then he spells out her maiden name. &amp;quot;l-e-n-n-a-r-d.&amp;quot; When Larry met Laurie Lennard in 1986 in New York City, he was a struggling comedian doing stand-up, and she was booking what she calls &amp;quot;the offbeat guests&amp;quot; for Late Night With David Letterman. One night she saw Larry perform. &amp;quot;I thought he was hysterically funny,&amp;quot; she says, so she tried to schedule him on the show. &amp;quot;I could never get him booked. He didn&amp;#039;t tell traditional jokes, and David [Letterman] really never got it.&amp;quot; Instead she went on a date with him, and then another. &amp;quot;Then I completely blew him off,&amp;quot; she recalls. She ran into him on a Manhattan street six months later. &amp;quot;I said, &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;m so sorry I didn&amp;#039;t call you back! I feel terrible! Can we be friends?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; He agreed, she says, because &amp;quot;he had this strategy that if he had enough women friends, maybe one of them would get to know him, and they would like him.&amp;quot; The plan paid off for Larry three years into their friendship. One night after a party, he walked her home, and as he frequently did, he came up to her apartment to hang out. As they watched TV, she laid her head on his lap\u2014a friendly gesture, she says. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s chewing his gum,&amp;quot; she recalls, &amp;quot;and then all of a sudden the gum falls out of his mouth and into my hair. Now he&amp;#039;s trying to get it out of my hair and of course it&amp;#039;s getting more and more stuck because he&amp;#039;s a total klutz. And then he leaned over and kissed me, and that was it. We were engaged, like, two weeks later.&amp;quot; It was three years before they actually wed, though. &amp;quot;He thought he wouldn&amp;#039;t be funny anymore,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;d go into jewelry stores to look at rings, and his entire neck would break out into hives. He was nuts.&amp;quot; Laurie ultimately got her way in 1993. &amp;quot;Larry&amp;#039;s standoff was terminated by a very strong martini,&amp;quot; she quips. She fed him the drink and then dragged him on a plane headed to Las Vegas. She did not, as Cheryl, Larry&amp;#039;s wife on the show, did, consent to Larry&amp;#039;s sleeping with another woman as a tenth-anniversary gift. (Larry did broach the idea when they were engaged as a potential fiftieth-birthday present, but, Laurie says, &amp;quot;I never said yes.&amp;quot;) In a manner of speaking, Larry confirms the gum-chewing incident. &amp;quot;Oh Jesus, she told you all that?&amp;quot; he sputters incredulously. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s not cool.... It&amp;#039;s slightly embarrassing to me that that&amp;#039;s going to be in print. It&amp;#039;s kind of a personal thing.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s a surprising reaction from someone who produces and stars in a sitcom based on his actual life\u2014a pursuit he embarked upon after spending seven years funneling his experiences (and Laurie&amp;#039;s and her family&amp;#039;s) into the lives of the characters on Seinfeld, with George Costanza as his doppelg\u00E4nger. If anyone could bemoan an invasion of privacy, you&amp;#039;d think it would be Laurie\u2014but she shrugs it off. &amp;quot;My life has been on TV for so long now, I&amp;#039;m used to it,&amp;quot; she says. (Laurie was with Larry when they dined with the friend who inspired the famed &amp;quot;low talker&amp;quot; on Seinfeld; it was Laurie&amp;#039;s disbelief that candy-flavor frozen yogurt was actually nonfat that led to Elaine and Jerry&amp;#039;s taking a cup of fro-yo for scientific testing.) Occasionally, she notes, Larry steps over the line. When asked to provide an example, she begins to forcefully clear her throat\u2014a reference to a favorite episode among Curb enthusiasts in which Larry acts like a cat trying to cough up a fur ball as he tries to dislodge one of Cheryl&amp;#039;s pubic hairs from the back of his throat. &amp;quot;I really hated that,&amp;quot; she says, and it&amp;#039;s a sentiment she obviously shared with her husband. &amp;quot;No,&amp;quot; Larry later concedes, &amp;quot;she was not happy about that.&amp;quot; She got her first taste of &amp;quot;reality TV \u00E0 la Larry David&amp;quot; during the early years in their marriage, which coincided with the first seasons of Seinfeld. After getting engaged, they moved together to Los Angeles\u2014he to work on Seinfeld and she to produce Get a Life with Chris Elliott for Fox. &amp;quot;Everyone thought my show was going to be a big hit,&amp;quot; she says with a laugh. By 1996, Seinfeld was in its seventh season\u2014by then a cultural bellwether\u2014and Laurie had given birth to the second of their two daughters (who are now eight and 10). &amp;quot;My husband&amp;#039;s show became the biggest sitcom in the history of the world,&amp;quot; Laurie says, &amp;quot;and so I started thinking to myself, What am I doing? I&amp;#039;m not going to come up with anything better than [Seinfeld]. I decided that I wanted to work in nonprofits.&amp;quot; Some in this position might have just written a check. But Laurie did not give up her TV career to transition into multimillion-dollar dilettantism. &amp;quot;I was going to be the president of a television network,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s where I was going. I was that ambitious.&amp;quot; She talked to Reiner, and he arranged a few meetings between Laurie and Kennedy and the NRDC&amp;#039;s president and cofounder, John Adams. She was bowled over by their mandate and passion. &amp;quot;I was like, Okay, I declare my devotion to this organization.&amp;quot; She began by educating herself on everything from pesticides to global warming. A watershed moment for her occurred at a lecture given by Kennedy at the home of Alan Horn, the president and COO of Warner Bros. &amp;quot;There were about 13 people there, and it broke my heart!&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I was like, This is not right\u2014he should be talking in front of thousands of people! That night I decided I was going to do an event for them in L.A.&amp;quot;  She decided to use her television experience to &amp;quot;produce&amp;quot; an event that would be more showbiz extravaganza than rubber chicken dinner. Larry named it &amp;quot;Earth to L.A.&amp;quot; (&amp;quot;Like,&amp;quot; she explains, &amp;#039;Earth to L.A.? Hello?&amp;#039;&amp;quot;), and it raised $500,000 for the NRDC. On May 6, she will produce the third biannual Earth to L.A. event with Tom Hanks as M.C. and performances by Jack Black, Willie Nelson, Ali G, and, natch, Larry David. This year&amp;#039;s show\u2014set to bring in $2 million\u2014should be a coveted ticket because of the political heat generated by the Democratic presidential primary, and because of the Hollywood heat of Larry David. At the same time, the war in Iraq has helped push the issue of fuel efficiency to the forefront\u2014though not without a little shove from Laurie and her friends. By the fall of 2002, with the U.S. invasion looming, Laurie and her hiking buddy, politico Arianna Huffington, began talking about how gas-guzzling cars perpetuate our dependence on oil-producing countries that support terrorism, Huffington recalls from the office of her baroque Brentwood home. Huffington aired the idea in her nationally syndicated column, and the response was huge, she says. Laurie seized the moment, calling in producer Lawrence Bender (Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting) and Ari Emanuel to join her and Huffington. The Detroit Project\u2014a series of television ads casting a critical eye on SUVs from the perspective of national security\u2014was born. The ads aired nationally and made quite a stir because, while conservation is often seen as a mostly liberal concern, in today&amp;#039;s global climate, the desire for national security crosses most political chasms. &amp;quot;She is a brilliant strategist,&amp;quot; Kennedy marvels. Representatives of the automotive industry are less impressed. Blaming oil dependence on &amp;quot;Detroit,&amp;quot; says Christopher Preuss, a spokesman for General Motors, &amp;quot;is typical of stereotyping coming from a Hollywood perspective. There is not a conspiracy against the environment.&amp;quot; He explains that the auto industry has environmental obligations, but it has global economic obligations as well\u2014and demand for hybrid technology in the U.S. is so marginal that American car companies are not focused on that market. However, Preuss says, GM is focusing on developing hydrogen fuel cells (another fuel-efficient technology) and on marketing hybrid buses, like the fleet it just sold to the city of Seattle. Through ELLE, Preuss invited Laurie to spend a day in Detroit, to hear about the resources GM is devoting to fuel efficiency, but he says she has not responded to his invitation. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s much easier to vilify Detroit,&amp;quot; he says, &amp;quot;than to get into a thoughtful discussion about the future of fuel efficiency.&amp;quot; In any case, the Detroit Project cemented Laurie&amp;#039;s reputation as a go-to for high-level Democrats needing assistance navigating Southern California&amp;#039;s political waters. When Harold Ickes, the deputy chief of staff under Clinton and a strategist for the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign, wanted to convene a meeting of high-power Democrats to discuss strategic advertising for the 2004 presidential election, he found his way to Laurie. Her orchestration, and the media attention that seems to follow her and her well-known friends, transformed what was supposed to be a small meeting into a rally that attracted more than 200 people and reportedly raised more than $2 million. She then helped organize a similar event in New York in February. She has also overseen the fundraising for and construction of a new NRDC headquarters in Los Angeles. To great media fanfare, Laurie and Leonardo DiCaprio hosted a press conference on January 22 to celebrate the opening of the gorgeous, state-of-the-&amp;quot;green&amp;quot;-art building in Santa Monica. The ground floor is an interactive museum called the David Family Environmental Action Center. In an effort to acquaint herself with the skills of press and political maneuvering, she founded a group called Action Forum that seeks to educate Hollywood women\u2014such as Elizabeth Wiatt, the wife of William Morris honcho Jim Wiatt, and Kelly Meyer, who&amp;#039;s married to Universal Studios president Ron Meyer\u2014on environmental issues and the finer points of lobbying. After two years of tutelage, Laurie has lobbied some of the more powerful Democrats on Capitol Hill, such as House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, and has met with moderate Republicans such as Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. Her work is making a bona fide mark on policy. Before turning the governor&amp;#039;s mansion over to Arnold Schwarzenegger, former governor Gray Davis signed into law a bill for which Laurie lobbied, requiring the state to stop adding SUVs to its fleet of 73,000 cars (about 10 percent of which are SUVs) unless a large, rugged automobile is necessary to complete a particular job. According to Laurie, the legislation will save the near-bankrupt state $3 million over three years\u2014a fact that Laurie has shared with the nation&amp;#039;s 49 other state treasurers.  &amp;quot;This is a hell of a lot more rewarding than producing television pilots,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;And when you get a victory, no matter how small, it is so delicious.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a11252/laurie-david/?click=smart&kw=ist&src=smart&mag=ELM&link=-SMT-ELM>