James Cromwell

Info

Full Name: James Cromwell
Date of birth: January 27, 1940 (86 years old)
Location: Los Angeles, California
Country: USA

James Cromwell has been active for 50 years, participating in 32 movies that average a 6.9/10 score.

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Biography

He got his first Oscar nomination at 55, playing a farmer who barely speaks. After twenty years of one scene parts on American television, James Cromwell became, in 1995, the most recognisable human face in 'Babe': a quiet man who dances with his wife and tells a pig it'll do.

He stands a shade under two metres, which makes him the tallest actor ever nominated for an Academy Award, and he has spent half a century being cast as presidents, bent police chiefs and terrible fathers.

The son of a blacklisted director

He was born in Los Angeles on 27 January 1940 but grew up in Manhattan. His father was John Cromwell, a film director through the thirties and forties, and his mother the actress Kay Johnson. They divorced when he was six.

His father was blacklisted during the McCarthy years and lost his career in Hollywood, which left a mark on the son. He studied at Carnegie Mellon, graduated in 1964, and spent the sixties between theatre and politics: he was active against the Vietnam war and knew Mickey Schwerner, the civil rights worker murdered in Mississippi in 1964.

His television debut came in 1974 on 'The Rockford Files', and he had a recurring part on 'All in the Family'. His first film was 'Murder by Death' (1976) with Peter Falk. For nearly twenty years that was the job: a face that turned up for a while and left.

Farmer Hoggett

'Babe' was directed by Chris Noonan and written and produced by George Miller of 'Mad Max'. Cromwell plays Arthur Hoggett with almost no dialogue and complete stillness, and the film swept up seven Oscar nominations, including his for supporting actor. He came back for 'Babe: Pig in the City' (1998).

The four years that followed were the busiest of his life. He was the drunken inventor of warp drive in 'Star Trek: First Contact' (1996), appeared in Milos Forman's 'The People vs. Larry Flynt', and held his own against Arnold Schwarzenegger in 'Eraser'.

His best villain is Captain Dudley Smith in Curtis Hanson's 'L.A. Confidential' (1997), the avuncular, charming policeman who turns out to be the worst thing in the film, with Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce and Kevin Spacey around him.

In 1999 he was the warden in Frank Darabont's 'The Green Mile', with Tom Hanks and Michael Clarke Duncan, and the same year he played William Randolph Hearst in HBO's 'RKO 281: The Battle Over Citizen Kane', about the making of 'Citizen Kane'. It brought his first Emmy nomination.

Presidents, dukes and mad scientists

From then on he populated American film with men who hold power. He was a retired astronaut for Clint Eastwood in 'Space Cowboys' (2000), the man who built the robots in 'I, Robot' (2004) with Will Smith, and Gwen Stacy's father in 'Spider-Man 3' (2007).

British audiences know him best as the Duke of Edinburgh in Stephen Frears's 'The Queen' (2006), opposite Helen Mirren. Two years later he played George H. W. Bush in Oliver Stone's 'W.', with Josh Brolin as the son.

He was also Jean Dujardin's loyal chauffeur in 'The Artist' (2011); the voice of the villain in 'Big Hero 6' (2014); John Hammond's old partner in Juan Antonio Bayona's 'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom' (2018); and part of Steven Soderbergh's 'The Laundromat' (2019).

Leads have been rare. The best of them is 'Still Mine' (2012), a small Canadian film in which he plays a man in his eighties determined to build, with his own hands, the house he wants his wife to die in.

Television and the Emmy

He may have been even better on television. He was George Sibley, the late, fragile second husband, in 'Six Feet Under' (2003-2005), Alan Ball's series, opposite Frances Conroy. In '24' he played Jack Bauer's father, which is close to a summary of his whole career: the patriarch you shouldn't trust.

His one Emmy came in 2013 for 'American Horror Story', in the 'Asylum' season, as a Nazi doctor hiding inside a Catholic institution for Ryan Murphy, with Jessica Lange and Sarah Paulson. He also turned up in 'Boardwalk Empire' and 'ER'.

Then came Ewan Roy, Logan's older brother in 'Succession': the old socialist who appears every so often to tell his family what they are, and who delivers the funeral speech in the final season. It brought him three Emmy nominations for a part that takes up a few minutes a season, working off Brian Cox in Jesse Armstrong's dialogue.

In 2024 he played a legendary Hollywood producer in 'Sugar', the Apple TV+ series in which Colin Farrell looks for his missing granddaughter.

Vegan, arrested, and a week in jail

Away from work he is one of the most persistent activists in the business, and not the sort who signs letters. He has been vegetarian since 1974 and went vegan while making 'Babe'. He has been arrested protesting animal testing, SeaWorld, gas storage facilities and a power plant.

That last one ended somewhere few Hollywood actors go. In July 2017, aged 77, he served seven days in jail in New York for refusing to pay the fine from a 2015 sit-in at a gas fired power plant in Wawayanda. In 2022 PETA named him its person of the year, after he superglued his hand to the counter of a Manhattan Starbucks in protest at the surcharge on plant milk.

He has married three times. He had three children with his first wife, Ann Ulvestad, and one of them, John, is taller still and has played younger versions of his father's characters. He was then married to the actress Julie Cobb, and since 1 January 2014 to another actress, Anna Stuart. They live in Warwick, a small town in New York state. He turned 86 in January 2026.