Ingrid Newkirk was born in England on June 11, 1949. She was raised mostly in India, where her father’s job as a navigational engineer had taken the family. Her mother worked with lepers, while Newkirk attended convent boarding schools. ‘It was the done thing for a British girl in India,’ she said. ‘But I was the only British girl in this school. I was hit constantly by nuns, starved by nuns. “The whole God thing was shoved right down my throat.” When she was 18, with the Vietnam War raging, she moved with her father to the United States, who was seconded to the United States Air Force in Florida, where he helped design bombing systems for airplanes and ships.

In 1972, Ingrid Newkirk was 22 years old, living in Poolesville, Maryland, and studying to become a stockbroker. She admits that her favourite food around this time was liver.

At 19, Newkirk married  an American, Steven Newirk, who she later divorced in 1980. By the age of 22 she had herself sterilized, a decision she says came from the conviction that the world was full of unwanted babies. At one point, she considered adopting, but she “just got too busy with the animals.

In March 1980, Newkirk and fellow animal activist, AlexPacheco decided to form a group to educate the American public about their radical animal rights ideas. They called it People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and it consisted of what Newkirk later called “five people in a basement.” The couple also fell in love and began living together, even though they were very different. Newkirk was older, practical, very organized, whereas Pacheco was absent-minded and barely looked after himself, spending his time in white painter’s overalls and eating vegetarian hot dogs straight from the can.

Newkirk and her cause both provoke strong feelings. Michael Specter writes that she “has the popular image of a monster,” becoming more disliked with every PETA stunt, unable even to walk through an airport without accosting every woman wearing fur. She told him that she has had to stop vacationing in tropical or poor countries like Mexico, because she spends the entire time rescuing animals from what she calls their “horrid owners.” Peta recently put out a book, One Can Make a Difference. In it, Newkirk writes, “I live only for [animals], because if I didn’t have them I would have killed myself a long time ago.” Suicide averted, Newkirk still has to find a successor. I am looking for a “Mini-Me”, she says.

Newkirk is best known for the issue awareness campaigns she organizes on behalf of PETA, in order to promote animal rights and veganism. In her will, for example, she has directed that her skin be turned into wallets, her feet into umbrella stands, and her flesh into “Newkirk Nuggets,” then grilled on a barbecue. “We are complete press sluts,” she told The New Yorker. “It is our obligation.”

Despite her approach to improving animal welfare, Newkirk remains committed to the idea that “animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment.” She has been criticized in that regard for her support of actions carried out in the name of the Animal Liberation Front. Her position is that the animal rights movement is an extreme one, and that “thinkers may prepare revolutions, but bandits must carry them out.

She was heavily criticized in 2003, when she wrote to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to protest the use of a donkey as a suicide bomber, triggering the criticism that she was prioritizing animal over human life. “We are named People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,” she told Specter. “There are plenty of other groups that worry about the humans.” She was also criticized for saying that she would oppose animal research even if it led to a cure for AIDS.