Actors Josh Hartnett and Sharon Stone spoke to over 100 Macalester students at a John Kerry rally in front of Bateman Plaza Tuesday morning. After giving brief speeches, Hartnett and Stone led the audience to vote at Macalester-Plymouth United Church on Macalester Street.

Hartnett spoke first and addressed his reasons for voting Kerry-Edwards. “I’ve traveled overseas a lot, and I have seen how people have lost for America in the past four years,” he said. “I started [acting] six or seven years ago, and I remember back then people overseas used to be psyched to see Americans. The present administration has destroyed that.”

Hartnett said that the media unfairly depicts celebrities who are publicly involved with politics as narcissistic. He said that despite what media sources may say, he is not campaigning for Kerry to further his career or gain media exposure. “I wanted to come here as a private citizen to get students to vote. I don’t see myself as an actor making an appearance…just as a person who has a certain political platform,” he said.

Though Hartnett came to endorse the Kerry/Edwards ticket, some of the rally focused directly on him. Students enclosed Hartnett in a circle, stepping forward one by one to ask for autographs and pictures with the actor. But Hartnett didn’t seem to mind the attention. “You guys are so much more respectful than the people at Rochester. They grabbed my ass,” he said.

Hartnett, doused in Kerry pins, stickers, and a tee-shirt, seemed to approach students with ease. “So, what do you guys want to talk about?” he asked a small group of students. To one student in the audience, who was holding a sign that read “Sharon and Josh, come have a beer with us tonight,” Hartnett responded, “Where’s the beer, man?”

Hartnett, a registered independent, had been working with get out the vote campaigns, such as Rock the Vote, before campaigning for Kerry. “I didn’t want to come out and endorse a candidate early on in the game,” he said.

Sharon Stone spoke of the importance of women voting and defending their rights. “When I was your age, we didn’t have the right to choose,” she said. “There were back alley abortions, and I knew many women who died. You have these rights now. I beg you, keep them alive.”

Stone also said that women now make up a majority of the American population, and have more means of making their voices heard than women in the past have had. “We are no longer a minority,” she said. “We have the power, and the right, to choose the president of the United States.”

House Minority Leader Matt Entenza also spoke to students on Tuesday. “Put your card in for Democrat, to drive this country in the right direction,” he said.