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Betty White gobsmacked over SNL hosting grassroots campaign

By April MacIntyre Feb 16, 2010, 16:06 GMT

01/23/2010 - Betty White - 16th Annual Screen Actor\'s Guild Awards - Press Room The Shrine Auditorium - Los Angeles, CA. USA © Albert L. Ortega / PR Photos

If you are a living breathing American, you love Betty White.  The actress is a American smallscreen icon who has catapulted to film and is a champion of animal rights.

She is loved so much that a grassroots campaign began on Facebook that urged SNL producer Lorne Michaels to put the cheerful bawdy animal lover on as a host.

No one was more surprised that Betty White, hot off her Super Bowl Snickers ad, and who is flabbergasted that people care so much to lobby on her behalf to star in the long-running New York-based sketch comedy show on NBC.

Once a lioness of classic American sitcoms "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Golden Girls," Ms. White has been a busy lady of late, costarring with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds in the romantic comedy "The Proposal," and being honored for her lifetime acting achievements by the Screen Actors Guild.  The recent Snickers' ad was a cool bonus for her fans.

"I don't even know where that came from," the 88-year-old Golden Girls Emmy winner told People magazine about the online movement to have her host "SNL."

"That just came out of left field. It's ridiculous. I don't think ["SNL" creator and producer] Lorne Michaels even knows about it, so we won't worry about it."

Ms. White is a fierce animal rights supporter who leads her cause with a smile, and was honored on Presidents' Day in Las Vegas by Proctor and Gamble's Iams Eukanuba division, along with the Morris Animal Foundation, for her lifetime commitment to improving the lives of animals.

Ms. White has been on the foundation's board of directors since 1971.

"My life has been divided into two halves: show business and animal work, the two things I love most," said White. "They keep electing me to the board, and I keep saying that it's time you threw me away by now. They haven't been able to get rid of me."

Ms. White will appear as Grandma Bunny in Disney's fall release "You Again" with Sigourney Weaver, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kristin Chenoweth and Kristen Bell.