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Amid the bustle of New York's urban core on one spring day in May 2022, James Cromwell entered a Starbucks, glued his hand to a counter, and protested about the surcharges on vegan milks. “When will you stop raking in huge profits while patrons, animals, and the environment suffer?” Cromwell declared as other protesters streamed the protest online.

But, the unconcerned customers of the establishment paid scant attention. Maybe they didn’t know they were in the company of the tallest person ever recognized for an Academy Award, performer of one of the best speeches in Succession, and the only actor to utter the words “space adventure” in a sci-fi franchise production. Police came to close the store.

“No one listened to me,” Cromwell muses three years later. “They would come in, hear me at the top of my lungs talking about what they were doing with these non-dairy creamers, and then they would go around to the other side, place their request and stand there looking at their cellphones. ‘We’re facing doom of the world, folks! Everything will cease! We have 15 minutes!’”

Unfazed, Cromwell remains one of the industry’s greatest actor-activists – or maybe activist-actors is more fitting. He protested against the Southeast Asian conflict, supported the civil rights group, and took part in civil disobedience actions over creature welfare and the environmental emergency. He has lost count 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 avatar of a disillusioned generation that marched for global harmony and progressive goals at home, only to see, in their twilight years, a former president reverse the clock on abortion and many other achievements.

Cromwell certainly looks and sounds the part of an veteran progressive who might have a revolutionary poster in the attic and consider Bernie Sanders to be not radical enough on capitalism. When interviewed at his home – a log cabin in the rural community of a New York town, where he lives with his spouse, the actor Anna Stuart – he rises from a seat at the fireplace with a warm greeting and extended palm.

Cromwell stands at over two meters tall like a ancient tree. “Perhaps 10 years ago, I heard somebody smart say we’re already a fascist state,” he says. “We have turnkey fascism. The mechanism is in the door. All they have to do is a single action to turn it and open Pandora’s box. Out will come every exception, every loophole that the Congress has written so assiduously into their legislation.”

Cromwell has witnessed this scenario before. His father a family member, a famous Hollywood director and actor, was blacklisted during the 1950s purge of political persecution merely for making remarks at a party praising aspects of the Russian theatre system for nurturing 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 House Committee on Un-American Activities. He had little of importance to say but a committee emissary still demanded an expression of regret.

John Cromwell refused and, with a large cheque from Howard Hughes for an unrealised project, moved to New York, where he performed in a play with Henry Fonda and won a Tony award. James muses: “My father was not touched 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 – similar to today.”

Cromwell’s mother, a relative, and his stepmother, Ruth Nelson, were also successful 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.”

However, 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 creating something and my father was engaged and was working things out. It was very heady stuff for me. I said: ‘Oh, I gotta do this.’”

Creativity and ideology intersected again when he joined a theatre company founded by Black actors, and toured Samuel Beckett’s play a classic work for mainly African American audiences in a southern state, Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia. Some shows took place under armed guard in case white supremacists tried to attack the theatre.

The play struck a nerve. At one performance in a location, the civil rights activist a historical figure urged the audience: “I want you to pay attention to this, because we’re not like these two men. We’re not sitting idle for anything. Nobody’s giving us anything – we’re seizing what we need!”

Cromwell says: “I didn’t know anything about the southern US. I went down and the lodging had a sign on the outside, ‘Coloreds only’. I thought: ‘That’s a historical marker, obviously, back from the 1860s conflict.’ A wonderful 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 thrown out of a restaurant before, so I immediately stood up with my clenched hand. I would have done something rash. John O’Neal informed the man that he was violating our civil rights and that they would get to the bottom of it.”

But then, mid-anecdote, 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 growing up, trying to get the girl, trying to keep his nose clean, 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 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 various activities as well as acting.”

Subsequently, 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 predictable 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 skyrocketed thanks to his role as a farmer in Babe, a 1995 movie about a pig that yearns to be a sheepdog. 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 the film, spending $60,000 to hire a PR representative and buy industry ads to promote his performance after the studio declined to fund it. The gamble paid off when he received the nomination, 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 sick of the dance 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 Babe led to roles including leaders, religious figures and a royal in Stephen Frears’ 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 spaceship 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 profit motive”. He criticises the focus on “attendance numbers”, the lack of genuine debate on issues such as racial diversity and the increasing influence of social media popularity 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 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 his character asks an actor’s Jack Vincennes, “Have you a valediction, boyo?” before killing him. Spacey, by then an award recipient, disagreed with director and co-writer a creative over what the character should reply. A quietly defiant Spacey won their disagreement.

This spurred Cromwell to try a alteration of his own. Hanson objected. “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 experience and his propensities, I said: ‘You expletive, curse you, you piece of shit! You don’t know what the {fuck|expletive