WASHINGTON (AFP) - He has cheated death and withstood excruciating pain in the Indiana Jones adventure movies, and now US actor Harrison Ford has gone the extra mile in the discomfort stakes to protect rainforests.

He has had his chest waxed.

Anyone who has ever waxed their legs or, worse still, bikini line or underarms, knows that this form of hair removal can be painful.

But while Ford winces, he doesn't make a peep when the esthetician in the short video rips a wide swathe of his chest hair out.

It happens as the actor nears the end of a monologue about how depleting the rainforests in distant lands hurts people in countries like the United States.

"When rainforests get slashed and burned, it releases tonnes of carbon into the air we breathe. It changes our climate. It hurts," Ford says in the clip.

"Every bit of rainforest that gets ripped out over there," he says, as the esthetician pats down a wax strip and then rips it off, "really hurts us over here."

The point of the video -- which could be entitled "Indiana Jones and the Wrath of Wax" -- was to raise awareness of the crucial part preserving tropical rainforests could play in stemming climate change, Conservation International (CI), which made the clip with Ford, said.

"Few people realize that burning and clearing tropical forests emits at least 20 percent of total greenhouse gases that cause climate change - more than all the world's cars, trucks and airplanes combined," CI said in a statement.

Ford, who is on the board of CI, needed no arm-twisting to submit to pain to protect the rainforest, CI chairman Peter Seligmann said.

"Harrison Ford is a passionate conservationist who has helped direct CI's strategy and actions for almost two decades, and we thank him for using his unique standing as an international film star to spread this important message," said Seligmann.

And although he is an excellent actor, Ford wasn't putting on a show when he winced as the esthetician deforested his chest, Seligmann added.

"I was there when he filmed it, and it really hurt," he said.

"There's nothing about the expression on his face that was fake."

Source: AFP