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In the middle of the bustle of midtown Manhattan on a Wednesday in May 2022, James Cromwell walked into a Starbucks, glued his hand to a counter, and protested about the surcharges on plant-based alternatives. “How long until you cease raking in huge profits while patrons, animals, and the planet suffer?” Cromwell declared as other protesters streamed the demonstration live.

But, the unconcerned patrons of the coffee shop paid little heed. Perhaps 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 utter the words “star trek” in a Star Trek production. Law enforcement arrived 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 speaking about what they were doing with these non-dairy creamers, and then they would move past to the far corner, get their order and wait looking at their devices. ‘We’re facing doom of the world, folks! Everything will cease! We have very little time!’”

Unfazed, Cromwell remains one of the industry’s greatest actor-activists – or maybe activist-actors is more fitting. He marched against the Vietnam war, supported the civil rights group, and took part in nonviolent resistance protests over animal rights and the environmental emergency. He has forgotten the number of how many times he has been detained, and has even served time in prison.

But now, at 85, he could be seen as the symbol of a disillusioned generation that marched for peace abroad and progressive goals at home, only to see, in their twilight years, 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 Che Guevara 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 third wife, the actor his partner – he rises from a chair at the fireplace with a friendly welcome and outstretched hand.

Cromwell measures at over two meters tall like a ancient tree. “Probably 10 years ago, I heard somebody intelligent say we’re already a fascist state,” he says. “We have ready-made oppression. The mechanism is in the door. All they have to do is a single action to activate it and open a source of trouble. 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 renowned Hollywood director and actor, was blacklisted during the 1950s purge of anti-communist witch-hunts merely for making remarks at a party complimenting aspects of the Soviet arts system for nurturing young talent and contrasting it with the “exhausted” culture of Hollywood.

This seemingly innocuous observation, coupled with his presidency 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 nothing substantive to say but a committee representative 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 a fellow actor and won a Tony award. James muses: “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, Kay Johnson, and his father’s wife, Ruth Nelson, were also accomplished actors. Despite this strong background, he was initially hesitant to follow in their footsteps. “I resisted 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 picture with Ingmar Bergman’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 exciting stuff for me. I said: ‘Oh, I gotta do this.’”

Creativity and ideology intersected again when he joined a theatre company founded by African American performers, and toured Samuel Beckett’s play a classic work for mainly African American audiences in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, 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 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 offering us anything – we’re seizing 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 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 owner 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. 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-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 being killed, 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: ‘Personal narrative’. 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.”

Later, his wife will confide that she is among those urging Cromwell to write a autobiography. 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 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 decades when, at the age of 55, his career took off thanks to his role as a farmer in Babe, a 1995 movie about a pig that aspires to be a herding dog. It was a surprise hit, earning more than $250m worldwide.

Cromwell funded his own campaign for an Academy Award for best supporting actor in Babe, spending $sixty thousand to hire a publicist and buy industry ads to publicize his performance after the production company declined to fund it. The gamble paid off when he received the honor, the kind of recognition that means an actor is given roles rather than having to trudge through auditions.

“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 director: ‘What was it about the audition that made you give me the part? I did it no otherwise 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 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 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 fucking sick of it.”

The acclaim for the movie led to roles including presidents, popes and a royal in Stephen Frears’ a film, 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 star trek.”

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 inclusion and the increasing influence of online followings on hiring choices. He has “disinterest 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 yelling.”

He offers the example of LA Confidential, which he describes as a “genius piece of work”. In one scene, Cromwell’s intimidating Captain Dudley Smith asks Kevin Spacey’s Jack Vincennes, “Have you a valediction, boyo?” before shooting him dead. Spacey, by then an Oscar winner, disagreed with filmmaker and co-writer Curtis Hanson over what the character should reply. A subtly resistant Spacey won their battle of wills.

This spurred Cromwell to try a line change of his own. Hanson objected. “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