Babe star Cromwell filming in Victoria

James Cromwell's character comforts his granddaughter, played by Natasha Calis,
shot Thursday in Shawnigen Lake for the movie 'Impact'.
Photo by Handout Photo.




Michael D. Reid, Victoria Times Colonist
Published: Monday, May 05, 2008

James Cromwell had acted on stage and television for years — remember Archie Bunker’s co-worker Stretch Cunningham on All in the Family? — but he says it wasn’t until he became a pig farmer he thought his career as one of Hollywood’s most recognizable actors really began.

“That’s probably the one I loved the most. He was such a sweet fella,” says the six-foot-seven actor, smiling as he recalls his Oscar-nominated role as kindly Farmer Hoggett in Babe, the 1995 charmer about an endearing piglet raised by sheepdogs.

Cromwell, 68, is described as “lovely” by crew members on the set of Impact, the $13-million sci-fi miniseries about the effects of a meteor’s collision with the moon.

“I try to do titles that are only one or two words. I did The Babe and Babe, and Deep Impact and Impact,” the Los Angeles-born actor jokes when reminded he was in a similarly titled movie about a comet on a collision course with earth 10 years ago.

Cromwell, last seen playing Prince Philip to acerbic perfection in The Queen, is bundled up in a winter coat inside Shawnigan Lake’s Royal Canadian Legion.

It’s doubling as Rumney’s Roadhouse, a ramshackle “sportsman’s bar” in Vermont. The parking lot is strewn with smoking, overturned vans and pickup trucks, some in flames from the effects of a gravitational crisis.

The fake scar on his forehead is because his character, a loving grandfather, has been in a crash while trying to get his grandchildren to Washington to be with their father, a scientist played by David James Elliott.

The outspoken actor, environmentalist, anti-war activist and defender of aboriginal rights says Babe was more than a movie to him. It was a life-changing “gift” from spiritual leader Baba Ram Dass, a.k.a. Dr. Richard Alpert, author of the inspirational book Be Here Now.

“I had lost my way and through a serendipitous series of events I wound up at an ashram with this teacher,” explains Cromwell, who was disillusioned by what was happening to his country during the Vietnam era.

He received the script for Babe after travelling around the world. He spent eight months in Africa, and spent time with monks in a temple in Japan before returning to New York to “reconnect with what initially gave me the impetus to be an actor.”
Cromwell understands why the Oscar-nominated movie captured the hearts and minds of millions.

“It’s a beautiful story, brilliantly done,” he says. “The trick [mating animatronics and live animals] was not apparent because very few people do it. It’s because of the genius of [director] Chris Noonan and [co-writer] George Miller. To create the illusion of intelligence and volition you had to train animals to relate to each other the way humans do.”

That Babe even got released was a miracle, he says.

“Universal almost threw the film away. They thought it would be a disaster.”

Its fortunes improved after the studio half-heartedly invited movie writers to see it after the premiere of Apollo 13 in Texas.

“The reporters went, ‘Oh, geez, oh no,’ but then they saw it and wrote great reviews.”

After making Babe, Cromwell became an ethical vegan and animal rights crusader, working with organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. He had been a vegetarian since taking a disturbing motorcycle trip through the stockyards of Texas in 1975.

“As far as you could see there was suffering, and the stench and sounds were haunting,” Cromwell recalls somberly.

Having played princes to presidents, he’s one of Hollywood’s most ubiquitous actors. Memorable roles include Cromwell’s lethally corrupt police chief in L.A. Confidential, the prison warden in The Green Mile, a monk who befriends Babe Ruth in The Babe, Jack Bauer’s evil father in 24, geologist George Sibley in Six Feet Under, a dying bishop in E.R., Mr. Skolnick in Revenge of the Nerds and Dr. Zefram Cochrane in Star Trek: First Contact.

Just don’t call him a character actor.

“There are two distinctions. One is you never get the girl, which is the part I don’t like,” he says, grinning. “The second is the assumption that you can’t carry the picture. I don’t do ‘characters.’ I always do me — where I’ve got lines written and I have to get from one line to the next in a circumstance which alters who I am.”

He’ll do that again when he starts rehearsals Thursday in Louisiana for his role as former U.S. president George Bush in W, Oliver Stone’s biopic on current President George W. Bush. Although Cromwell is no stranger to the Oval Office — he played fictional presidents in The Sum of All Fears and The West Wing and Lyndon B. Johnson in RFK — this is different.

“I played Johnson when he was dead so he couldn’t write me a letter,” he quips. He says the challenge is to convey the essence of the elder Bush without descending into caricature. “You have to create the sense you really are the person, but under private circumstances. You’ve never seen him say to his son he’s disappointed in his behaviour or that he can’t talk to him, or that he’s embarrassed.”

Why does Cromwell get cast as authority figures so often?

“A lack of imagination,” jokes the actor, who has played bankers, senators and judges. “If you start out as a pig farmer and then do L.A. Confidential, instead of saying, ‘Wow! What range!’ they say, ‘What are we going to do with him?’ Then you do Sum of All Fears and if you’re a believable president they say, ‘Oh, we’ve got him now.’ ”

Cromwell is fuelled by the influence of his parents — actress Kay Johnson and John Cromwell, the blacklisted actor-director.

“He said, ‘It’s a tough business. You don’t work and people are critical and you lose hope. But it works out if you keep at it.’ ”

©Victoria Times Colonist 2008

Had this in a Google alert and included the whole post. James Cromwell is quite the actor. Can't wait to see him and DJE in 'Impact'.