Some of the most outspoken women who not only make headlines in Hollywood but create headlines for their global activism are working moms.  Three working mothers who have received Academy Awards come to mind immediately: Angelina Jolie, Susan Sarandon, Julia Roberts and Emma Thompson.

Angelina Jolie captured hearts for her globetrotting humanitarian work with the United Nations and is mom to six children. Three are adopted and three are her biological children with her partner, actor Brad Pitt. Reports say, the couple is setting up house in France, with Pitt’s parents moving in to create a multi-generational environment for the jet-setting family.

Jolie won her Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for her performance as troubled psychiatric hospital patient Lisa Rowe in Girl, Interrupted in 1999. 

Julia Roberts is one of the most successful actresses in American film history—her movies have grossed over $2 billion collectively and she's the first woman to reach this milestone.  She walked away with Best Actress for her portrayal of the real-life unlikely champion of the people, Erin Brockovich, in the film by that title in 2001.

One charitable focus for Roberts is The Association of Hole in the Wall Gang Camps, started by iconic actor Paul Newman and supported in part by Newman’s Own Foundation.  What started with one camp in Connecticut to give children with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses “a chance to be kids,” as Newman put it, is now a global presence with the same mission.  Roberts has been a hands-on volunteer, a celebrity fundraiser and serves on the board.

This “pretty woman” is mom to 5-year-old twins and a toddler. She and her husband Danny Moder divide their time between New York City and Taos, New Mexico.

Both Roberts and Jolie were named as Working Mother's Most Powerful Moms in Media for 2010.

Susan Sarandon has been nominated for five Academy Awards and took home her Oscar in 1995 for one of her least glamorous roles, a catholic nun doing prison outreach in Dead Man Walking.

On the world stage, she has been a celebrity ambassador for UNICEF for many years, focusing on HIV/AIDS, and, as of 2010, became the Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Sarandon is a 2011 poster mom for “Got Milk?” and a burgeoning entrepreneur, setting up ping-pong entertainment clubs.

Sarandon told Working Mother, “As moms we have tremendous power to influence our children and their habits.”  Sarandon is mother of actress Eva Amurri, 25, Jack Robbins, 23, and Miles Robbins, 18. Hollywood is still calling. Sarandon plans to reunite with Al Pacino in a new film titled Arbitrage, a Wall Street-related drama.

Another outspoken actress, this time from England, but undoubtedly a Hollywood star, is the multi-talented Emma Thompson. Thompson has been in more than 30 movies and received Academy Awards for best actress in Howard’s End (1992) and for screenwriting for Sense and Sensibility (1995). 

Her Oscars prove she is as much a writer as an actor.  She told Working Mother, she loves writing partly because it gives her time to be at home with her family–her 10-year-old daughter, Gaia, was born when Thompson was 40. She also has an adopted 23-year-old son from Rwanda, Tindyebwa Agaba.

Beyond film, theater, TV and motherhood, she has used her celebrity to fight for causes important to her–human trafficking and global poverty on a grand scale. She is active with The Helen Bamber Foundation, a UK-based human rights organization that focuses on individual survivors of cruelty, and ActionAid, an anti-poverty organization.

Thompson newest project is My Fair Lady–a non-musical remake of George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. It will be interesting to see what such a self-professed feminist with a deep interest in human rights will bring to the life of Liza Doolittle. Thompson wrote the screenplay and will play a supporting role as the housekeeper.