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In the middle of the bustle of New York's urban core on one spring day in 2022, James Cromwell entered a coffee chain, affixed his hand to a counter, and complained about the surcharges on vegan milks. “When will you stop making excessive earnings while patrons, animals, and the environment endure harm?” Cromwell boomed as other protesters broadcast the protest online.

However, the unconcerned patrons of the establishment paid scant attention. Maybe 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 the hit series, and the only actor to say the words “star trek” in a Star Trek production. Law enforcement came to shut down the store.

“Nobody paid attention to me,” Cromwell reflects three years later. “Customers entered, hear me at the full volume talking about what they were doing with these vegan options, and then they would go around to the other side, get their order and wait looking at their cellphones. ‘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 Black Panthers, and took part in nonviolent resistance actions over animal rights and the climate crisis. He has forgotten the number of how many times he has been arrested, and has even spent time in jail.

Currently, at eighty-five, he could be seen as the avatar of a disappointed generation that marched for global harmony and progressive goals at home, only to see, in their twilight years, a former president turn back the clock on reproductive rights and many other achievements.

Cromwell certainly looks and sounds the part of an old lefty who might have a Che Guevara poster in the loft and consider a political figure to be too soft on the economic system. When visited at his home – a wooden house in the farming town of Warwick, where he lives with his spouse, the actor Anna Stuart – he rises from a chair at the fireplace with a warm greeting and extended palm.

Cromwell stands at 6ft 7in tall like a ancient tree. “Perhaps 10 years ago, I heard somebody smart say we’re already a authoritarian regime,” he says. “We have ready-made oppression. The key is in the door. All they have to do is a single action to activate it and open Pandora’s box. Out will come every loophole, every exception that the Congress has written so assiduously into their laws.”

Cromwell has witnessed this scenario before. His father John Cromwell, a renowned Hollywood filmmaker and actor, was banned during the McCarthy era of political persecution merely for making remarks at a party praising aspects of the Soviet arts system for fostering young talent and comparing it with the “exhausted” culture of Hollywood.

This apparently harmless observation, coupled with his presidency of the “a political group” which later “shifted somewhat to the left”, led to John Cromwell being called to give evidence to the government panel on alleged subversion. He had little of importance to say but a committee representative still demanded an apology.

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 touched except for the fact that his best friends – 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 guilty or not – sort of like today.”

Cromwell’s mother, Kay Johnson, and his father’s wife, another actor, were also successful actors. Despite this deep lineage, he was initially reluctant to follow in their footsteps. “I resisted for as long as possible. I was going to be a mechanical engineer.”

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 exciting stuff for me. I said: ‘Oh, I gotta do this.’”

Creativity and ideology collided again when he joined a theatre company founded by Black actors, and toured Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot for mainly African American audiences in a southern state, another region, Tennessee, and an area. Some performances took place under security protection in case extremists tried to firebomb the theatre.

Godot struck a nerve. At one performance in a location, the social advocate 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 giving us anything – we’re taking 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 civil war.’ A wonderful Black lady took us to our rooms.

“We went out to have dinner, and the owner 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 fist balled. I would have done something stupid. a company founder informed the man that he was violating our legal protections and that they would get to the bottom of it.”

But then, mid-anecdote, Cromwell stops himself and breaks the fourth wall. “I’m listening to myself,” 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 assaulted, 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: ‘Personal narrative’. People ask if I should write a memoir because I have all these stories and I’ve done a lot of different things as well as acting.”

Later, 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 stinky, John.’”

The conversation continues 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 Babe, a 1995 film about a animal that aspires to be a sheepdog. It was a surprise hit, earning more than $250 million worldwide.

Cromwell paid for his own campaign for an Academy Award for best supporting actor in the film, spending $60,000 to hire a publicist and buy industry ads to promote his performance after the production company declined to fund it. The risk paid off when he received the honor, the kind of accolade that means an actor is offered scripts rather than having to go through auditions.

“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 director: ‘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 good enough, 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 a royal in a director’s a film, as the industry tried to pigeonhole 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 space travelers on … some kind of cosmic journey.”

Cromwell views Hollywood as a “seamy” business driven by “avarice” and “the bottom line”. He criticises the focus on “asses in the seats”, the lack of genuine debate on issues such as inclusion and the increasing influence of online followings on hiring choices. He has “disinterest in the parties” and sees the “game” as secondary to “the business transaction”. He also admits that he can be a handful on set: “I do a lot of arguing. I do too much yelling.”

He offers the example of LA Confidential, which he describes as a “genius piece of work”. In one scene, Cromwell’s menacing his character asks Kevin Spacey’s Jack Vincennes, “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 disagreement.

This spurred Cromwell to try a line change 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 background and his tendencies, I said: ‘You expletive, curse you, you insult! You don’t know what the {fuck|expletive