Actress Mia Farrow has hit out at US oil giant Chevron as she visited an Amazonian region Ecuador accuses the company of polluting.

"I feel an incredible sense of anger," she said after being shown pools of oil in the Aguarico region of Sucumbios in the northeast of the South American country.

As other celebrity activists have done before her, Farrow symbolically dipped her hand in the oil during the tour.

Chevron was ordered to pay a $9 billion fine for polluting the Amazon when the US oil company Texaco operated in Ecuador between 1964 and 1990.

Chevron inherited the pollution lawsuit when it acquired Texaco, a former rival, in 2001.

Chevron has challenged the ruling, claiming it was the victim of a trial riddled with fraud, and has sought to reverse the judgment in legal cases mounted in both the United States and Ecuador.

Thousands of Ecuadoran villagers say they were sickened and got cancer as a result of contamination of the local water supply.

AFP