Helen Prejean her best-selling book, "Dead Man Walking" (1993), based on her experiences with two convicts on Death Row for whom she served as spiritual adviser before their executions. In her book, she explored the effects of the death penalty on everyone involved. The book was adapted as a 1995 film of the same name, starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. It was also adapted as an opera, first produced in 2000 by the San Francisco Opera. Helen Prejean was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the daughter of Augusta Mae (née Bourg; 1911–1993), a nurse, and Louis Sebastian Prejean (1893–1974), a lawyer.
Susan Sarandon for the documentary "The Celluloid Closet," which looked at how Hollywood films have depicted homosexuality. Sarandon and Robbins appeared at the 2000 Shadow Convention in Los Angeles to speak about drug offenders being unduly punished. In 2004, she served on the advisory committee for 2004 Racism Watch, an activist group. Sarandon has become an advocate to end the death penalty and mass incarceration. She has joined the team of people fighting to save the life of Richard Glossip, a man on death row in Oklahoma. In May 2015, Sarandon launched a campaign with fundraising platform Represent.com to sell T-shirts to