James Cromwell Interview: ‘When you reach a certain age, you take everything away’

James Cromwell – activist, actor, voice of reason in Heir and farmers in Honey – explaining his love of Britain’s Got Talent. “It’s the best of England,” the 81-year-old said with his smooth and sensitive timbre. He recalled two boys auditioning with a song about being bullied, and immediately choked. “In America, it’s all about violence, instead of love, compassion, and feeling. What I like about the show is Simon—” Cromwell’s voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “Oh, I am very emotional. The way Simon Cowell and those judges received those who had the courage to step out there…”

He switched to The X Factor, namely Cowell in tears at a young man grieving for his best friend, and “wonderful woman from the north of England” – I assume Cheryl. “She was there and asked: ‘How can we ease his pain? How can we celebrate this man? How can we help him through the next moment but also allow him to have his feelings? ‘” Cromwell sighed, eyes misty. “That’s the kind of job I’m looking for.”

In a conversation that includes everything from politics to pigs to protest, Cromwell’s adoration of watery British reality shows is straightforward. But it also got to his roots. While in the past he played scary people – the corrupt police chief in LA Privacy, a Nazi doctor in American Horror Story: Asylum – he is often associated with piety, kindness, or gently saying to a talking pig, “That will do, pig.”

Off camera, whether he is against animal rights or anti-capitalist leaders, he is only capable of empathizing with the most vulnerable people in society. He also exhibits a kind of eternal youth, an older man who still sees the world through innocent eyes. “For me, I’m 19,” he joked. “I still make the same mistakes when I was 19 years old. Hopefully not much, but only approx. The same dreams and desires still inform everything that I do. And for a 6ft tall guy with a good sense of humour, I didn’t do too bad.”

Cromwell was calling from a log cabin in upstate New York to share with his wife, Anna. She owns 13 acres of land, all of which are currently covered with winter snow. Cromwell’s brother-in-law lived next door to the family and did most of the work related to the property. “He cuts trees and plows the pasture, and here I sit and feed,” he chuckles.

Cromwell has lived on the property for seven years, after exchanging a “postage stamp” cottage in Los Angeles for large tracts of farmland and woodland. “I can’t imagine being able to keep up with the pace of a city at my age,” he said. “After you’ve been through your whole life, you want to sit back and let life pass you by. I know I’m going down the stream, I know what the end is, so at least let me just sit here and enjoy what I see.”

There is a pragmatism in the way Cromwell talks about death. He discussed the subject frequently, without fuss, as if it were pointless not to admit that it was getting closer than before. But it also feels jarring at times. Cromwell was clearly still very passionate about the work he had to do, and his face still had that glint of wisdom that made him so endearing. Honey.

His new movie, Australian comedy It’s never too late, exploiting such nimbleness. He plays a Vietnam veteran incarcerated in an Adelaide retirement home who is much more serious than the staff insist. Recruiting members of the PoW team he had fled from captivity decades earlier, he plots to escape the organization and reunite with his lost love – a former war nurse. The game is played by Jacki Weaver.

Weaver and Cromwell have lovely chemistry, with the latter finally getting a chance to play the romantic lead. In 1995, the period that Honey was released, he told a journalist that he wished he had been cast as a “lover” more often in a movie, or someone with a rich inner life and sexuality.

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“The character actors never got the girl,” he explains today. “Their romantic life is unremarkable. You are there to serve the leader who can express feelings and have relationships. As a human being, I want to show a part of me that I don’t get a lot of opportunities to show.” He added that the last time he came back after that was Honey. “I had a relationship in that movie, but it was a relationship between species. I understand the animal and its aspirations. It has courage, that inspires me to have courage.”

What Cromwell also likes It’s never too late talks about elderly people – people who, according to him, regardless of their individual abilities, tend to be despised by society and cut off from the world. “When you reach a certain age, they say, ‘That’s it, you don’t drive, we don’t want to see you anymore.’ You have taken everything away from you, and you do not exist in the world as a viable entity.” He waved his finger at his camera. “Unless you give something back for yourself. You are still alive, you are still learning. You can still contribute, you can still make a difference, you can still inspire. And what else? ”

Cromwell’s creative life tends to intersect with his active work, but not always intentionally. Years ago when he was famous and won an Oscar nomination for Honey, he is a working stage and television actor and the son of a filmmaker – Of Human Bondage director John Cromwell, who was blacklisted during McCarthy’s time. “I feel like Woody Allen’s character Zelig,” he joked, “is always on the periphery of some big event happening, regardless of whether he’s in it or not.”

He toured the American South with a troupe at the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and later became involved in antiwar activism in the seventies. His work in guerrilla theater – protest plays often performed in public and without permission of the authorities – saw him cross the street with the Black Panthers, anti-capitalists, and other opposers of sexism, homophobia, nuclear energy and environmental cruelty.

He humbly says: “In other words, I got into a lot of situations. “The people I respect the most are the quiet people who don’t let go and don’t lose their passion. They are heroes. Now I have my problems – physically – that make a lot of the things I used to do unattainable for me. “

However, he is still trying his best. He is currently on six-month probation for protesting animal cruelty in Texas and was charged with a third-degree misdemeanor in 2019 for opposing the construction of a natural gas-fired power plant near his home. “I don’t know if it affects my acting ability,” he said. “Probably in Hollywood – I think they’ll be without me soon. But I still work regularly, so that’s fine.”

But that work needs to align with his values, he said. When Cromwell was approached by Heir Creator Jesse Armstrong to play the bastard billionaire’s brother Logan Roy (Brian Cox) in the series, the actor was initially hesitant with the idea. During an hour-long conversation about the part, he encouraged Armstrong to remake the character for more of a moral compass than just being different. Heir monster.

“The whole world of the show is dark and devoid of any kind of community,” he explains. “Every action is secret and every character has an agenda, and you have to defend yourself against such people. That’s how I feel about the delegate class in Heir, and the class of people seems to be running this country and running it underground. He does not believe that a Vietnamese vet like Ewan Roy will emerge from the war without mercy for his fellow human beings, and asserts that his character rejects selfishness and the moral breakdown that Logan is accepting. — that’s where the change comes from.”

I admit that – in our current context – it is hard not to feel as though progressive politics are a doomed endeavor. How does he maintain hope? “We couldn’t be disappointed,” he said. “We cannot afford that. The best way to deal with what you’re feeling is to become attached. Genuine journalism is extremely important now. Telling the truth is really important right now. You know King Lear? He stretches out his hand and clutches the Zoom camera between his hands: a private performance for one person. “’The man who eats the excess and craves your commandment slave, will not see because he does not feel… Therefore, the distribution should be reduced to excess and each one has enough. ” – It’s right there! He said it. God’s gift to the world: William Shakespeare.”

With that dramatic call to redistribute wealth, Cromwell pledged to keep fighting. “Laws against legal, constitutionally guaranteed protests in this country are becoming more and more commonplace, and they do it not to stifle the right but also the left,” he said. extreme. “I cannot say I am a revolutionary because that means total commitment. But I’m at my peak, and my moment will come when my voice is required again and my presence will make all the difference. ” Before we say goodbye, he sends a final greeting down to the camera – an outstanding performer. “Don’t go lightly on that good evening,” he said. “We must fight the death of light!”

‘Never Too Late’ in theaters February 4th