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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 Starbucks, glued his hand to a surface, and complained about the surcharges on plant-based alternatives. “When will you stop raking in huge profits while customers, creatures, and the planet endure harm?” Cromwell boomed as fellow activists streamed the protest online.

But, the unconcerned customers of the establishment paid scant attention. Perhaps they didn’t know they were in the presence of the tallest person ever recognized for an Academy Award, performer of one of the most memorable monologues in Succession, and the only actor to say the words “space adventure” in a Star Trek production. 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 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, get their order and wait looking at their cellphones. ‘It’s the end of the world, folks! It’s going to end! We have 15 minutes!’”

Unfazed, Cromwell remains one of the industry’s greatest actor-activists – or maybe activist-actors is more accurate. 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 arrested, and has even spent time in prison.

But now, at 85, 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 reverse the clock on reproductive rights and many other achievements.

Cromwell certainly appears and speaks 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 his partner – he stands up from a seat at the fireplace with a friendly welcome and outstretched hand.

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

Cromwell has witnessed this scenario before. His father a family member, a renowned Hollywood director and actor, was banned during the 1950s purge of political persecution merely for making comments at a party praising aspects of the Russian theatre system for nurturing young talent and contrasting it with the “used up” culture of Hollywood.

This apparently harmless observation, coupled with his presidency of the “a political group” which later “moved slightly 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 emissary still demanded an expression of regret.

He refused and, with a large payment 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 Tony award. James reflects: “My father was not harmed 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, a relative, and his father’s wife, Ruth Nelson, were also successful actors. Despite this deep lineage, he was initially reluctant to follow in their path. “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 a famed director’s crew, proved to be a turning point. “They were producing art and my father was engaged and was working things out. It was very heady stuff for me. I said: ‘Oh, I have to do this.’”

Creativity and ideology intersected again when he joined a performance group founded by Black actors, and toured Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot for mainly African American audiences in a southern state, another region, a state, and Georgia. Some shows took place under armed guard in case white supremacists tried to firebomb the theatre.

The play struck a chord. 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 deep south. 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 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 clenched hand. I would have done something rash. a company founder informed the man that he was infringing upon our legal protections and that they would get to the bottom of it.”

However, 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 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 various activities as well as acting.”

Subsequently, his wife will confide that she is among those urging Cromwell to write a memoir. But he has little appetite 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 awful, 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 skyrocketed thanks to his role as a agriculturalist in a beloved film, a 1995 film about a animal that yearns to be a sheepdog. It was a surprise hit, grossing more than $250m worldwide.

Cromwell paid for his own campaign for an Oscar 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 given roles 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 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 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 fail in the reading. I was just fucking sick of it.”

The recognition for the movie led to roles including presidents, popes and Prince Philip in a director’s a film, as the industry tried to pigeonhole him. In Star Trek: First Contact he played the spacefaring pioneer Dr Zefram Cochrane, who observes of the spaceship crew: “And you people, you’re all space travelers on … some kind of star trek.”

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 “game” 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 menacing his character asks an actor’s a role, “Have you a valediction, boyo?” before shooting him dead. Spacey, by then an award recipient, disagreed with director and co-writer a creative over what Vincennes should reply. A quietly defiant Spacey won their battle of wills.

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