Scott Neeson Walked Away From Hollywood to Stand With Children at a Phnom Penh Dump

Scott Neeson did not start out with advantages. A Scottish-Australian, he left high school early and found work running the projector at drive-in movie theaters through a government job program.

He kept learning the business from the inside. By 1987 he was managing director of the distribution arm of the Australian cinema chain Hoyts. In 1993 he moved to Los Angeles, and over a 26 year film career he rose to president of 20th Century Fox International, where he oversaw the overseas releases of films such as Braveheart, Titanic, Star Wars, and X-Men. He had signed to take a senior role at Sony Pictures next.

In 2003, during a break between jobs, Neeson traveled through Southeast Asia. In Phnom Penh he was taken to the Steung Meanchey garbage dump, where thousands of people, many of them children, picked through waste for roughly a dollar a day.

There he met a nine-year-old girl named Sreyoun. He arranged housing, schooling, and medical care for her family, at first paying for it himself. CCF's own account says the help began at about 35 dollars a month.

Neeson has described the moment the decision became clear. While he was with sick children at the dump, he took a call from Hollywood in which a star's camp complained about travel comforts. Retellings of the call differ in their details, but his point has stayed the same: the contrast between the two worlds was too stark to ignore.

He has said he felt he could not keep living with one foot in each. In a 2023 interview with Tatler Asia he said he has no regrets and does not miss the money.

In 2004 Neeson founded the Cambodian Children's Fund and moved to Phnom Penh for good. He has said he sold his boat, his house, and his cars to fund the work. The first goal was modest: get about 80 children out of the dump and into school.

That first step was practical rather than grand. It meant paying school costs, finding families safe places to live, and getting sick children to doctors. The organization grew from those basics into education, housing, health care, and community programs.

Neeson did not build CCF alone. It has grown into an organization with Cambodian leadership, including a Global Chief Operating Officer, Lach Savy, and separate boards in the United States, Australia, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom supported by donors around the world.

The work has also drawn criticism. A filmmaker, James Ricketson, published blog posts attacking Neeson and CCF. According to ABC News in Australia, CCF answered with published factsheets and chose not to sue, describing him as a serial harasser.

CCF says it has served more than 4,200 students, and Tatler Asia reported in 2023 that about 2,000 children were being supported. Sreyoun, the girl Neeson met at the dump, graduated from university in 2019 with a degree in finance and economics.

Neeson is still living in Phnom Penh and is listed as CCF's founder and a director on several of its boards. By CCF's account, he still walks through the communities it serves.