Aileen Getty, a billionaire who finances shock actions of environmental activists

The granddaughter of the petroleum tycoon J. Paul Getty publicly displays the spectacular actions carried out by activists from the Just Stop Oil group in museums.

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The climatic emergency is the new battle of Aileen Getty, granddaughter of the American oil magnate J. Paul Getty. In A forum published by the Guardian , the sexagenarian” applauds “the” courageous activists “like those of the Just Stop Oil collective which multiply the spectacular actions targeting famous works (the sunflowers, de Van Gogh, and the CHARLES III wax statue, in London, or the girl with a pearl, from Vermeer, in The Hague, in the Netherlands). This type of action is “an alarm that brings us out of the status quo”, assures the one who says he is “proud” to finance the climate Emergency Fund. This organization, which she co -founded in 2019, distributed more than $ 4 million to movements of which Rebellion and Just Stop Oil extinction. Aware that her links with the oil industry can question, she declared, in 2019: “I try to understand all of this myself. (…) I want to do what is correct and what is right.”

the wealthy heiress

His grandfather, the founder of the Getty Oil Company, was described as the richest man in the world in the 1960s. Married five times and father of five, the industrialist is the source of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, to whom he bequeathed a large part of his property at his death in 1976. His children also inherited a nice capital. Eight years after the death of the patriarch, they turn a page in family history by selling the Getty Oil. According to Forbes magazine, their heritage amounted to $ 5.4 billion in 2015. Which made them, at the time, the 56 the wealthiest American family.

the unknown sister

Aileen Getty has long lived in the shadow of the men of her family. If his younger brother, Mark, is known to have co -founded the photography agency Getty Images, it is his elder, John Paul Getty III, who defeated the chronicle in 1973, kidnapped at 16 years by the Calabraise mafia. Their grandfather, renowned near his money, would have refused to pay the $ 17 million in ransom. The kidnappers will have to meet their ambitions downwards and that an Italian newspaper receives a teenager’s ear for the ransom to be paid. In 2017, Ridley Scott therefore draws the material from a film, all the money in the world.

the committed survivor

In Growing Up Getty (not translated, Gallery Books, 2022), devoted to this dynasty, James Reginato describes the childhood of Aileen in Italy, the very chic boarding school in Great Britain where she was educated, and the Rebellious adolescence that plunges her into alcohol and drugs. In 1981, she married Christopher Wilding, son of Elizabeth Taylor, with whom she has two children and whom she divorced. At that time, it was diagnosed with HIV positive. “If there had not been HIV, I would always be a victim, she will explain in 1996. Victim of my parents, my inheritance, of life.” Staying close to his ex-beautiful mother , she joined the patients of AIDS and the homeless while fighting to defeat her addictions. Before embarking on the fight for the defense of the planet.

/Media reports.