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In the middle of the hustle of midtown Manhattan on one spring day in May 2022, James Cromwell entered a coffee chain, affixed his hand to a surface, and complained about the extra fees on plant-based alternatives. “When will you stop raking in huge profits while customers, animals, and the planet suffer?” Cromwell declared as other protesters broadcast the protest online.

However, the unconcerned patrons of the establishment paid little heed. Perhaps they didn’t realise they were in the company of the tallest person ever recognized for an acting Oscar, deliverer of one of the most memorable monologues in Succession, and the only actor to utter the words “space adventure” in a Star Trek film. Police came to close the store.

“Nobody paid attention to me,” Cromwell muses three years later. “Customers entered, listen to me at the full volume speaking about what they were doing with these non-dairy creamers, and then they would move past to the other side, place their request and wait looking at their devices. ‘It’s the end of the world, folks! Everything will cease! We have very little time!’”

Undeterred, Cromwell remains one of Hollywood’s greatest actor-activists – or maybe activist-actors is more accurate. He protested against the Southeast Asian conflict, supported the civil rights group, and took part in nonviolent resistance actions over animal rights and the environmental emergency. He has forgotten the number of how many times he has been arrested, and has even spent time in prison.

Currently, at eighty-five, he could be seen as the avatar of a disappointed generation that demonstrated for global harmony and social advances at home, only to see, in their later life, Donald Trump reverse the clock on reproductive rights and many other gains.

Cromwell certainly looks and sounds the part of an old lefty who might have a revolutionary poster in the loft and consider Bernie Sanders to be not radical enough on the economic system. When interviewed at his home – a log cabin in the rural community of Warwick, where he lives with his third wife, the actor his partner – he stands up from a seat at the fireplace with a warm greeting and outstretched hand.

Cromwell stands at over two meters tall like a great weathered oak. “Probably 10 years ago, I heard somebody smart say we’re already a fascist state,” he says. “We have ready-made oppression. The key is in the lock. All they have to do is a single action to activate it and open Pandora’s box. Out will come every exception, every loophole that the legislature has written so diligently into their legislation.”

Cromwell has seen this movie before. His father John Cromwell, a renowned Hollywood filmmaker and actor, was banned during the 1950s purge of political persecution merely for making comments at a party praising aspects of the Soviet arts system for nurturing young talent and comparing it with the “exhausted” culture of Hollywood.

This seemingly innocuous observation, coupled with his leadership of the “Hollywood Democrats” which later “moved slightly to the left”, led to John Cromwell being called to give evidence to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He had nothing substantive to say but a committee emissary still demanded an expression of regret.

John Cromwell refused and, with a generous cheque from a wealthy businessman for an unrealised project, moved to New York, where he acted in a play with a fellow actor and won a theater honor. James reflects: “My father was not harmed except for the fact that his closest companions – a lot of them – avoided him and wouldn’t talk to him because he had been called to testify. They didn’t care whether the person was at fault or not – sort of like today.”

Cromwell’s mother, a relative, and his father’s wife, Ruth Nelson, were also accomplished actors. Despite this strong background, he was initially reluctant to follow in their footsteps. “I avoided for as long as possible. I was going to be a technical professional.”

But, a visit to a Scandinavian country, where his father was making a film with Ingmar Bergman’s crew, proved to be a pivotal moment. “They were producing art and my father was involved and was working things out. It was very heady stuff for me. I said: ‘Oh, I gotta do this.’”

Creativity and ideology collided again when he joined a performance group founded by Black actors, and toured Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot for predominantly African American audiences in a southern state, another region, a state, and Georgia. Some performances took place under armed guard in case white supremacists tried to firebomb the theatre.

Godot struck a chord. At one performance in Indianola, Mississippi, the civil rights activist a historical figure urged the audience: “I want you to listen carefully to this, because we’re not like these two men. We’re not waiting for anything. Nobody’s offering us anything – we’re seizing what we need!”

Cromwell says: “I didn’t know anything about the southern US. I went down and the rooming house had a sign on the outside, ‘Coloreds only’. I thought: ‘That’s a relic, obviously, back from the civil war.’ A kind Black lady took us to our rooms.

“We went out to have dinner, and the proprietor of the restaurant came over and said: ‘You’ll have to leave.’ I’d never been ejected of a restaurant before, so I immediately stood up with my fist balled. I would have done something rash. a company founder informed the man that he was infringing upon our civil rights and that they would get to the bottom of it.”

However, mid-anecdote, Cromwell stops himself and addresses the interviewer directly. “I’m hearing my words,” he says. “These are not just stories about an actor doing his thing growing up, trying to get the girl, trying to keep his record spotless, trying not to get hurt. People were dying, people were being assaulted, people were being fired upon, people had symbols of hate on their lawns.

“I feel uncomfortable recounting it always with the points that I think an interviewer would be interested in: ‘My story’. People ask if I should write a book because I have all these stories and I’ve done a lot of different things as well as acting.”

Subsequently, his wife will reveal that she is among those urging Cromwell to write a autobiography. But he has little appetite for such a project, he insists, since he fears it would be formulaic and “because my father tried it and it was so poor even his wife, who loved him, said: ‘That’s really awful, John.’”

We push on with his story all the same. Cromwell had been notching up film and TV roles for years when, at the age of 55, his career took off thanks to his role as a agriculturalist in a beloved film, a 1995 film about a animal that yearns to be a sheepdog. It was a surprise hit, grossing more than $250 million worldwide.

Cromwell paid for his own campaign for an Oscar for best supporting actor in Babe, spending $sixty thousand to hire a publicist and buy industry ads to promote his performance after the studio declined to fund it. The risk paid off when he received the nomination, the kind of recognition that means an actor is given roles rather than having to go through tryouts.

“I wouldn’t be here if I had not gotten a nomination,” he says, “because I was so sick of the routine that had to be done when you did an audition. I finally asked a filmmaker: ‘What was it about the audition that made you give me the part? I did it no differently than I’ve done anything.’ He said: ‘Jamie, it has nothing to do with your performance; we just want to see that you’re the kind of guy we want to spend four weeks with.’

“It was the insecurity which, because I knew him, didn’t show as much as it did when I went in to audition with a unknown person who I identified as my father. I had the thing from my father – there he is again in me, telling me I’m not worthy, I’ll not succeed in the reading. I was just extremely sick of it.”

The recognition for the movie led to roles including presidents, popes and Prince Philip in a director’s The Queen, as the industry tried to pigeonhole him. In Star Trek: First Contact he played the spacefaring pioneer a character, who observes of the Starship Enterprise crew: “And you people, you’re all astronauts on … some kind of cosmic journey.”

Cromwell views Hollywood as a “seamy” business driven by “greed” and “the bottom line”. He criticises the focus on “asses in the seats”, the lack of genuine debate on issues such as racial diversity and the increasing influence of online followings on casting decisions. He has “no interest in the parties” and sees the “game” as secondary to “the deal”. He also admits that he can be a difficult on set: “I do a lot of disputing. I do too much shouting.”

He offers the example of a film, which he describes as a “genius piece of work”. In one scene, Cromwell’s menacing Captain Dudley Smith asks an actor’s a role, “Have you a parting word, boyo?” before killing him. Spacey, by then an Oscar winner, disagreed with filmmaker and co-writer Curtis Hanson over what Vincennes should reply. A subtly resistant Spacey won their battle of wills.

This prompted Cromwell to try a alteration of his own. Hanson disapproved. “Sure enough, he stands behind me and says: ‘James, I want you to say the line the way it was written.’ But not having Kevin’s experience and his propensities, I said: ‘You expletive, curse you, you insult! You don’t know what the {fuck|expletive