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Amid the bustle of New York's urban core on one spring day in 2022, James Cromwell entered a Starbucks, affixed his hand to a counter, and complained about the surcharges on plant-based alternatives. “When will you stop raking in huge profits while patrons, animals, and the planet suffer?” Cromwell boomed as fellow activists streamed the demonstration live.

But, the unconcerned customers of the coffee shop paid scant attention. Perhaps they didn’t know they were in the company of the tallest person ever recognized for an acting Oscar, deliverer of one of the best speeches in the hit series, and the only actor to utter the words “space adventure” in a sci-fi franchise film. Police came to close the store.

“Nobody paid attention to me,” Cromwell reflects three years later. “They would come in, listen to 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 other side, place their request 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!’”

Undeterred, Cromwell remains one of the industry’s greatest activists who act – or maybe performers with principles is more fitting. He protested against the Vietnam war, supported the civil rights group, and took part in nonviolent resistance actions over animal rights and the environmental emergency. He has lost count of how many times he has been detained, and has even spent time in prison.

But now, at 85, he could be seen as the avatar of a disappointed generation that demonstrated for global harmony and social advances at home, only to see, in their twilight years, Donald Trump reverse the clock on abortion and many other gains.

Cromwell certainly looks and sounds the part of an old lefty who might have a revolutionary poster in the loft and consider Bernie Sanders to be too soft on capitalism. When visited at his home – a wooden house in the rural community of Warwick, where he lives with his third wife, the actor his partner – he stands up from a seat at the hearth with a friendly welcome and extended palm.

Cromwell stands at 6ft 7in tall like a great weathered oak. “Probably 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 lock. All they have to do is a single action to turn it and open a source of trouble. Out will come every loophole, every exception that the Congress has written so assiduously into their legislation.”

Cromwell has seen this movie before. His father a family member, a famous Hollywood filmmaker and actor, was banned during the 1950s purge of political persecution merely for making remarks at a party complimenting aspects of the Soviet arts system for nurturing young talent and comparing it with the “exhausted” 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 John Cromwell being called to testify to the House Committee on alleged subversion. He had nothing substantive to say but a committee representative still demanded an apology.

He refused and, with a large cheque from Howard Hughes for an unproduced work, moved to New York, where he acted 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 – cut him out 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 father’s wife, Ruth Nelson, were also accomplished actors. Despite this strong background, he was initially hesitant to follow in their footsteps. “I avoided 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 producing art and my father was engaged and was working things out. It was very exciting stuff for me. I said: ‘Oh, I gotta do this.’”

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

The play struck a nerve. 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 southern US. I went down and the lodging had a sign on the outside, ‘Segregated accommodation’. 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 stupid. John O’Neal informed the man that he was violating our civil rights 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 tales about an actor doing his thing maturing, 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: ‘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 confide 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 bad even his wife, who loved him, said: ‘That’s really awful, 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 movie about a pig that yearns to be a herding dog. It was a surprise hit, grossing more than $250 million worldwide.

Cromwell funded his own campaign for an Academy Award for best supporting actor in Babe, spending $60,000 to hire a publicist and buy trade press ads to promote his performance after the production company 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 auditions.

“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 otherwise 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 four weeks 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 extremely sick of it.”

The recognition for Babe led to roles including leaders, popes and a royal in Stephen Frears’ a film, as the industry tried to pigeonhole him. In a sci-fi installment he played the interstellar 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 bottom line”. 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 “industry” 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 yelling.”

He offers the example of a film, 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 valediction, boyo?” before killing him. Spacey, by then an Oscar winner, disagreed with director and co-writer Curtis Hanson over what Vincennes should reply. A subtly resistant Spacey won their disagreement.

This spurred 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 propensities, I said: ‘You motherfucker, fuck you, you insult! You don’t know what the {fuck|expletive