This link comes courtesy of The Vegan Sistah Project and, I am sad to say that no, I do not think this is a hoax. This is absolutely consistent with the tactics of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Just read Jan Frel's article from back in 2005 PETA: Whatever It Takes, a revelatory yet tad too applauding article on their tactics.

As Frel well says, PETA doesn't care about it's reputation. Even though their original goal as an organization was the "total liberation of animals"; they've done an interesting detour in their pursuit. Sometime in the 90s PETA figured out it was more profitable to focus on selling themselves as the only liberators of animals. 

So they've walked way from overtly funding terrorist organizations like the Animal Liberation Front. They've also gone through great lenghts to scrub the web and recorded history from any connections Ingrid Newkirk, founder of PETA, had with the cultish teachings of gurus who call for radical liberation of all creatures from "human suffering"; meaning, no use of honey, no killing of lice or cockroaches, no drinking of milk, wearing of pearls, clothing with silk.

What they've done is to take their extremist yet highly privileged origins and completely channeled them into a 24/7 advertising cycle for the organization. All PETA does is to spend their time and effort bringing attention to PETA. It's in this onanistic pursuit they go to great lenghts at offending as many people as possible since any defense or push back will only bring more attention to them. It's no wonder they spend considerable time and effort throwing racist, mysogynist, exploitative, ableist and transphobic advertising petards to unsuspecting passers-by.

Most importantly, PETAs tactics have focused on selling their brand of activism as a form of mainstream pornography that has every celebrity-seeking famewhore normalizing the organization with their naked endorsements.

PETAs uses the soft-core porn of "I rather go naked than wear fur" ads to hide their more hard core and snuff campaigns. It doesnt matter to the celebutards and Hollywoodiots they sign up for their campaigns --and that includes you Benicio del Toro!

Celebrity is a parasitic ecosystem where someone's host is somebody else's victim and PETA has learned to play both host and victim with their campaigns.

They cry poverty and hence the need to make their ads porno-ish and exploitative because "sex sells". And yet nowadays many fameseekers of all kinds use the PETA ad campaign as a measure of their celebrity and famewhoring success. Professional famewhore Khloe Kardashian being a prime example of Hollywood hipocrisy.

And before I forget, let me reiterate : YES BENICIO DEL TORO, YOU'RE A HOLLYWOODIOT FOR EVEN THINKING OF LENDING YOUR NAME TO PETA.

So this doesn't shock me in the least: PETA is looking for an African American or Mixed-Race Vegan Actor Needed for PETA Video to play you know who? A STRIPPER VERSION OF BARACK OBAMA. Twenty-something years in existance and PETA has never done anything like this for any of the WHITE MALE PRESIDENTS this country has had. Get a black man in the White House and they'll go after him with every exploitative trick in their bag:

African American or Mixed-Race Vegan Actor Needed for PETA Video
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) will be featuring a video on PETA.org in mid-January 2010 called the "State of the Union Undress." This video will feature an attractive woman dressed in business attire proudly and powerfully reciting a speech, which will be approximately five minutes long about PETA's hard work for animals in 2009 (she will be able to read from a teleprompter during filming). It is meant to be a parody of President Obama's state of the union address, but instead of being about America's progress, it will be about PETA's progress. As the woman reads the script, she will begin removing articles of clothing until she is completely naked. It will be a sexy video with a powerful message. Full frontal nudity will be shown on this video (by the end of the video, the woman will have no bra or underwear on). We've done similar videos in the past and have achieved incredible success, including coverage on Fox News and hundreds of online outlets.

We have found that people do pay more attention to our racier actions, and we consider the public's attention to be extremely important. Part of our job is to shake people up and even shock them in order to initiate discussion, debate, questioning of the status quo, and of course, action. The current situation is critical for billions of animals, and because it is our duty to continue drawing attention to the plight of animals abused in the meat, clothing, experimentation, and entertainment industries, we are willing to use all legal means at our disposal in ways that will capture the public's imagination. Our goal is to make the public think about the issues. Although some consider our projects that include nudity to be controversial, many express support for these tactics.
[Emphasis mine]

Interesting how they're transparent about their goal of famewhoring and yet still justify it as part of their messianic burden of saving cats and bunnies.

BTW: They're not paying the actor anything. A DVD and the satisfaction of being on a PETA ad is all they're offering.