Christopher Meloni Gives the Gift of Smiles

From his turn as a wise-cracking junior mobster in the Gina Gershon-Jennifer Tilly cult classic, Bound, to playing a bisexual serial killer on HBO's Oz, to tackling the conflicted Detective Elliott Stabler on NBC's Law & Order: SVU, Christopher Meloni has proven that he has no problem playing the tough guy.

Yet any tough-guy facade melts away in an instant as Meloni describes an up-close experience last year, when he came face-to-face with the disfigured smile of one little girl — and watched that smile transform, almost miraculously, right in front of his eyes.

It was a year ago this month that this star of one of TV's most enduring and popular dramas took time out of his busy schedule to fly to Haiti on a mission with Smile Train — a non-profit dedicated to repairing the cleft lips and cleft palates of children in 77 of the poorest countries on earth.

"It was an eye-opening experience," he tells Tonic. "You always hear the cliché, ‘the poorest country in the western hemisphere,' but until you actually see it, you don't grasp it."

Of course, the country has since endured its worst earthquake in 200 years, and the hotel he stayed in was flattened. But what he saw in the Haitian people — and especially in that one little girl — will stay with him forever.

"In some of these children, you would see this sadness in their eyes. But as a whole, there really is a resiliency [in the Haitian people]. Maybe it's when you grow up in this sort of situation, and it's the only one you know, and you know it's a tough existence, I think there's a second skin that you have to grow. So there was a sense of presence and command and a sense of ‘peopleness' — if that makes sense. There was a certain pride," he recalls.

"It was great to be there and to experience these people, and yet at the same time I felt that all it would take is a match to set the society on fire. There's always just a sense of desperation in the air. They've learned to live in these circumstances, but all you needed was something to light that match, and hell would break loose. There was that sense of, ‘We have nothing, so guess what? There's nothing to lose.'

"Consequently, when you're in that state of mind, when kindness is shown and a good results occurs, there is great joy and celebration. A life is truly changed," he says.

And showing kindness was the entire purpose of his visit with Smile Train.

A New Beginning

Meloni was able to take one 4-year-old girl through the whole process of undergoing a cleft-repair surgery that would change her life forever.

"Borgeline was her name. This beautiful smile, these bright beautiful eyes ... and I said, ‘You ready?' She didn't speak English. She speaks Haitian French, and I said, ‘Un Deux Trois!' And she jumps into my arms! I put the mask over her to knock her out, very gently, and she allowed me to do that, and it took 35, 40 minutes to do the operation, and bam. Coming out like a champ. And as soon as it happens, the lip's a little puffy and swollen, but you literally go, ‘I can't remember what you looked like.'

"It's awesome," Meloni says, pausing for a moment. "It's an awesome, transformative experience. For everyone. For me. And obviously for her."

Getting Involved

Meloni had already dedicated himself to giving to Smile Train, long before his trip to Haiti.

"There are so many problems in the world, and I guess what appealed to me is that this organization, what they do, is very straightforward. Which is to say, what you give, you see results. With poverty, lack of drinking water, lack of jobs — those are more complicated issues to try to untangle, and very often they involve politicians, which is always a bad situation," he says.

Instead, Smile Train can take as little as $250, and use that money to pay for a cleft surgery that will transform a life. "You may be going back to poverty" after such a surgery, Meloni notes, "but at least you're not an ostracized member of a lower caste. I mean, how many bricks are you going to throw on top of a person?"

"The facts are, in many of these countries, if you're a little girl born with this affliction, you're done. Your not getting married. Your life is worse than many of your peers, and if you're a male or a female — it's just tough.

"An example would be that one of the Smile Train operators was in an African country, and when they looked at the manifest of all the people who had signed up, nearly a quarter of the children that were signed up had the same name. And they said, ‘There's gotta be some mistake.' And they were told, ‘No, no, no. In the native language to this African country, that is the word for "Cursed by God."

"It's not enough that you look like this, everyone let's you know you look like this, but they made sure that you're labeled — and know that this is your fault because you are lacking something in the divine's eyes. Just the psychological pressure and torture of it all is ..." Meloni trails off. "Yeah."

Giving Back

Knowing what he knew about Smile Train's work, even from afar, was enough to entice him to give.

"I gave a donation, and they just followed up with me. For me, it was a fair donation, and just what caught my eye was for $250 bucks, this is the result. Great," Meloni says. But then he got a call from Smile Train founder, Brian Mullaney. "Brian Mullaney who runs it said, ‘I'd like to talk to you more and educate you a bit more about who we are and what we do.'"

Chris obliged, and found even more to love about the organization's work.

"A huge part of what makes them successful and such a great bang for the buck is that part of the money that they provide goes to have professionals go out and give seminars," Meloni notes of Smile Train's efforts to teach local doctors how to perform cleft surgeries themselves.

"So it's not the great white man's burden. It's, ‘Guys, this is how you do it, this is how you fix it, we'll be behind you, so Mr. Doctor in backwater India, now instead of making $12,000 a year, you can now make $18,000 a year.'

"Then, all of a sudden, it's local people taking care of local problems without the USA coming on in on white horses. And that appealed to me. I thought that was a real spirit of altruism and community, and the best way to extend a helping hand. Teaching them how to fish," he says.

While traveling to Haiti and sitting in on a surgery isn't something every patron of Smile Train gets a chance to do, Meloni hopes others will continue to learn from his experience, and find it in their hearts to give to this organization that gives smiles back to children.

"I urge people to do their own research on it, so that they're comfortable, so they get how they do things," he says of the Smile Train. "And if it's something that makes sense, hop on board."

Watch Meloni's first-hand report from his trip to Haiti:

Click Here to donate to Smile Train.

Photos and video courtesy of Smile Train.