James Cromwell

James Cromwell is an award-winning American actor and activist.

As an actor, he is famous for his roles in Babe (1995), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, Star Trek: First Contact (1996), L.A. Confidential (1997), The Green Mile (1999), Space Cowboys (2000), The Sum of All Fears (2002), I, Robot (2004), The Artist (2011), the television series Six Feet Under (2003–2005), 24 (2007), and American Horror Story: Asylum (2012).

He has been nominated for an Oscar, four Emmy Awards, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards during his career. He won the 2013 Canadian Screen Award for Best Actor for his role in Still Mine and the 2013 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his role in American Horror Story: Asylum.

Why James Cromwell is vegan

James Cromwell is vegan for the animals and the planet. .

A vegetarian since 1974, after seeing a stockyard in Texas and experiencing the “smell, terror and anxiety,”¹Beck, C. 2003. To The Rescue. The Age. Available: https://web.archive.org/web/20120308110526/http://lists.envirolink.org/pipermail/ar-news/Week-of-Mon-20030623/002452.html [Accessed 7 August 2026] Cromwell levelled up to a vegan diet in 1995 after acting opposite a pig in the movie Babe. He told The Guardian, “On the second day of filming, I broke for lunch before everybody else. All the animals I’d worked with that morning were on the table, cut up, fricasseed, roasted and seared. That was when I decided to become a vegan.”²Bland, S. 2025. ‘I went vegan on the second day of filming’: James Cromwell on making Babe, the talking pig classic. The Guardian. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/jul/21/james-cromwell-vegan-how-we-made-babe-talking-pig [Accessed 7 August 2026].

Cromwell has long been an advocate for animal rights and environmental causes, and has been arrested many times for protesting. In 2013, at the age of 73, Cromwell was arrested for protesting against animal experimentation on cats³BBC News. 2013. James Cromwell, babe actor, arrested over cat torture protest. Available: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-21380502 [Accessed 7 August 2026]. and two years later he was once again arrested for protesting against a power plant in New York state.⁴Lee, B. 2015. Activist actor James Cromwell arrested in power plant protest. The Guardian. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/dec/21/actor-james-cromwell-arrested-ny-power-plant-protest [Accessed 7 August 2026]. In 2017, Cromwell protested against orcas being kept in captivity at Seaworld and yet again it resulted in arrest.⁵Stolworthy, J. 2017. Babe actor James Cromwell could face more jail time over SeaWorld protest. The Independent. Available: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/james-cromwell-jailed-actor-jurassic-world-2-fallen-kingdom-babe-seaworld-protest-american-horror-story-a7957251.html [Accessed 7 August 2026]. You cannot say the man is not committed to the cause!

“To deny an animal its right to self-determination, its right to live out its life as it chooses in its natural habitat, that is an aggression; it’s an aggression against the planet and all other sentient beings.”