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In the middle of the bustle of New York's urban core on a Wednesday in 2022, James Cromwell walked into a Starbucks, affixed his hand to a counter, and complained about the extra fees on vegan milks. “How long until you cease making excessive earnings while customers, creatures, and the environment endure harm?” Cromwell declared as fellow activists broadcast the protest live.

But, the insouciant patrons of the coffee shop paid scant attention. Perhaps they didn’t realise they were in the presence of the tallest person ever nominated for an Academy Award, deliverer of one of the most memorable monologues in the hit series, and the only actor to say the words “space adventure” in a Star Trek film. Police arrived to shut down the store.

“Nobody paid attention to me,” Cromwell reflects three years later. “They would come in, listen to me at the full volume talking about what they were doing with these non-dairy creamers, and then they would move past to the far corner, get their order and stand there looking at their devices. ‘It’s the end of the world, folks! It’s going to end! We have 15 minutes!’”

Undeterred, Cromwell remains one of the industry’s greatest activists who act – or maybe performers with principles is more accurate. He protested against the Southeast Asian conflict, supported the civil rights group, and took part in civil disobedience actions over animal rights and the climate crisis. He has lost count of how many times he has been detained, and has even spent time in prison.

But now, at eighty-five, he could be seen as the avatar of a disillusioned generation that marched for peace abroad and social advances at home, only to see, in their twilight years, Donald Trump 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 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 Warwick, where he lives with his third wife, the actor Anna Stuart – he rises from a chair at the hearth with a warm greeting and outstretched hand.

Cromwell stands at 6ft 7in tall like a ancient tree. “Probably 10 years ago, I heard somebody smart say we’re already a authoritarian regime,” he says. “We have turnkey fascism. 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 legislature has written so assiduously into their legislation.”

Cromwell has seen this movie before. His father John Cromwell, a famous Hollywood filmmaker and actor, was banned during the McCarthy era of political persecution merely for making remarks at a party complimenting aspects of the Russian theatre system for fostering young talent and contrasting it with the “exhausted” culture of Hollywood.

This apparently harmless comment, 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 alleged subversion. He had little of importance to say but a committee representative still demanded an expression of regret.

He refused and, with a large cheque from a wealthy businessman for an unproduced work, moved to New York, where he acted in a play with Henry Fonda and won a Tony award. James muses: “My father was not touched except for the fact that his best friends – 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 accomplished 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 Sweden, where his father was making a picture with a famed director’s crew, proved to be a pivotal moment. “They were creating something and my father was involved and was working things out. It was very heady stuff for me. I said: ‘Oh, I have to do this.’”

Art and politics collided again when he joined a theatre company founded by Black actors, and toured Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot for predominantly Black audiences in a southern state, another region, a state, and an area. Some shows took place under armed guard in case extremists tried to attack the theatre.

The play struck a chord. 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 sitting idle for anything. Nobody’s giving us anything – we’re taking what we need!”

Cromwell says: “I didn’t know anything about the deep south. 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 1860s conflict.’ 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 rash. John O’Neal informed the man that he was infringing upon our legal protections and that they would get to the bottom of it.”

But then, mid-story, 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 being killed, people were being beaten, people were being shot, people had crosses burned 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 book because I have all these stories and I’ve done a lot of various activities as well as acting.”

Later, his wife will confide that she is among those lobbying 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 bad even his wife, who loved him, said: ‘That’s really stinky, 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 farmer in a beloved film, a 1995 film about a pig that aspires to be a sheepdog. It was a unexpected success, earning more than $250 million worldwide.

Cromwell paid for his own campaign for an Academy Award for best supporting actor in Babe, spending $sixty thousand to hire a PR representative 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 accolade that means an actor is offered scripts 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 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: ‘James, it has nothing to do with your performance; we just want to see that you’re the kind of guy we want to spend a month with.’

“It was the chip on my shoulder 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 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 presidents, religious figures and Prince Philip in Stephen Frears’ The Queen, as the industry tried to pigeonhole him. In a sci-fi installment he played the spacefaring pioneer a character, who observes of the Starship Enterprise crew: “And you people, you’re all space travelers 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 “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 “industry” 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 a film, which he describes as a “genius piece of work”. In one scene, Cromwell’s intimidating his character asks an actor’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 Curtis Hanson over what Vincennes should reply. A subtly resistant Spacey won their disagreement.

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 tendencies, I said: ‘You motherfucker, curse you, you piece of shit! You don’t know what the {fuck|expletive