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In the middle of the hustle of New York's urban core on one spring day in May 2022, James Cromwell entered a Starbucks, glued his hand to a surface, and protested about the extra fees on plant-based alternatives. “How long until you cease raking in huge profits while patrons, creatures, and the environment endure harm?” Cromwell boomed as fellow activists streamed the protest online.

But, the unconcerned patrons of the establishment paid little heed. Maybe they didn’t know they were in the presence of the most statuesque person ever nominated for an Academy Award, deliverer of one of the best speeches in Succession, and the only actor to say the words “star trek” in a sci-fi franchise production. Law enforcement came to shut down the store.

“No one listened to me,” Cromwell muses three years later. “They would come in, hear me at the full volume speaking about what they were doing with these vegan options, and then they would go around to the other side, get their order and stand there looking at their cellphones. ‘We’re facing doom of the world, folks! It’s going to end! We have very little time!’”

Unfazed, Cromwell remains one of Hollywood’s greatest actor-activists – or maybe activist-actors is more accurate. He protested against the Vietnam war, supported the Black Panthers, and took part in civil disobedience actions over animal rights and the environmental emergency. He has forgotten the number of how many times he has been arrested, and has even served time in jail.

But now, at eighty-five, he could be seen as the symbol of a disappointed generation that marched for peace abroad and social advances at home, only to see, in their later life, a former president turn back the clock on reproductive rights and many other gains.

Cromwell certainly looks and sounds the part of an veteran progressive who might have a Che Guevara poster in the attic and consider Bernie Sanders to be not radical enough on capitalism. When interviewed at his home – a wooden house in the farming town of a New York town, where he lives with his spouse, the actor his partner – he stands up from a seat at the fireplace with a warm greeting and extended palm.

Cromwell measures at over two meters tall like a great weathered oak. “Perhaps 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 turn it and open a source of trouble. Out will come every exception, every loophole that the legislature has written so diligently into their laws.”

Cromwell has witnessed this scenario before. His father a family member, a renowned Hollywood director and actor, was blacklisted during the 1950s purge of political persecution merely for making comments at a party complimenting aspects of the Russian theatre system for fostering young talent and comparing it with the “used up” culture of Hollywood.

This apparently harmless comment, coupled with his presidency of the “a political group” which later “moved slightly to the left”, led to his father being called to testify to the government panel on Un-American Activities. He had little of importance to say but a committee emissary still demanded an apology.

John Cromwell refused and, with a generous cheque from a wealthy businessman for an unproduced work, moved to New York, where he performed in a play with Henry Fonda and won a Tony award. James reflects: “My father was not harmed except for the fact that his closest companions – a lot of them – cut him out and wouldn’t talk to him because he had been called to testify. They didn’t care whether the person was guilty or not – similar to today.”

Cromwell’s mother, Kay Johnson, and his father’s wife, Ruth Nelson, were also successful actors. Despite this deep lineage, he was initially hesitant to follow in their path. “I resisted for as long as possible. I was going to be a technical professional.”

However, a visit to a Scandinavian country, where his father was making a film with a famed director’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 exciting stuff for me. I said: ‘Oh, I have to do this.’”

Creativity and ideology intersected again when he joined a performance group founded by African American performers, and toured an playwright’s play Waiting for Godot for mainly Black audiences in Mississippi, another region, a state, and Georgia. Some performances took place under security protection in case extremists tried to firebomb the theatre.

Godot struck a chord. At one performance in Indianola, Mississippi, the social advocate Fannie Lou Hamer 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 taking 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 clenched hand. I would have done something stupid. John O’Neal informed the man that he was violating our legal protections and that they would investigate fully of it.”

But then, mid-story, Cromwell stops himself and breaks the fourth wall. “I’m hearing my words,” he says. “These are not just stories about an actor doing his thing maturing, trying to get the girl, trying to keep his record spotless, trying not to get hurt. People were dying, people were being beaten, people were being shot, people had symbols of hate on their lawns.

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

Later, his wife will reveal that she is among those urging Cromwell to write a memoir. But he has minimal interest 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 adored him, said: ‘That’s really stinky, John.’”

The conversation continues with his story all the same. Cromwell had been accumulating film and TV roles for years when, at the age of 55, his career took off thanks to his role as a agriculturalist in Babe, a 1995 film about a pig that yearns to be a herding dog. It was a unexpected success, grossing more than $250m worldwide.

Cromwell paid for his own campaign for an Academy Award for best supporting actor in Babe, spending $60,000 to hire a PR representative and buy trade press ads to publicize his performance after the production company declined to fund it. The risk paid off when he received the honor, the kind of recognition that means an actor is offered scripts rather than having to trudge through tryouts.

“I wouldn’t be here if I had not gotten a nomination,” he says, “because I was so tired 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 stranger 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 leaders, popes and Prince Philip in a director’s a film, as the industry tried to categorise him. In Star Trek: First Contact he played the interstellar pioneer a character, who observes of the Starship Enterprise crew: “And you people, you’re all astronauts on … some kind of star trek.”

Cromwell views Hollywood as a “seamy” business driven by “avarice” and “the profit motive”. He criticises the focus on “attendance numbers”, the lack of genuine debate on issues such as inclusion and the increasing influence of online followings on hiring choices. He has “no interest in the parties” and sees the “game” as secondary to “the deal”. He also admits that he can be a handful on set: “I do a lot of disputing. I do too much shouting.”

He offers the example of LA Confidential, which he describes as a “brilliant piece of work”. In one scene, Cromwell’s menacing his character asks Kevin Spacey’s a role, “Have you a parting word, boyo?” before shooting him dead. Spacey, by then an Oscar winner, disagreed with filmmaker and co-writer a creative over what the character should reply. A quietly defiant 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: ‘Jamie, I want you to say the line the way it was written.’ But not having Kevin’s background and his propensities, I said: ‘You expletive, fuck you, you insult! You don’t know what the {fuck|expletive