James Cromwell Biography (3)

Oscar nominee James Cromwell, whose career spans three decades and includes dozens of movie, television and stage appearances, garnered widespread recognition and an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his role of Farmer Hoggett, whose talking pig longs to be a sheep dog, in the 1995 sleeper hit and audience favorite Babe.

Following Babe, Cromwell won a series of prestigious roles, including the powerful banker Charles Keating in Milos Forman's Oscar-nominated The People vs. Larry Flynt, the scientist who invents a time warp in the epic space drama Star Trek: First Contact, the corrupt police captain in the Oscar-nominated L.A. Confidential, the general in the powerful drama The General's Daughter and William Randolph Hearst in RKO 281. He reprised his Oscar-nominated role in Babe: Pig in the City and also appears in such projects as Snow Falling on Cedars, A Slight Case of Murder, The Bachelor and the upcoming Space Cowboys.

Among his other notable film credits are The Education of Little Tree, Eraser, Romeo Is Bleeding, Species 2, Deep Impact, A Fine Mess, Pink Cadillac, The Babe, Explorers, The Man with Two Brains, The Cheap Detective, Oh God, You Devil, Revenge of the Nerds and Murder By Death, his big-screen debut.

Cromwell, the son of acclaimed film director John Cromwell (Since You Went Away, Of Human Bondage, Abe Lincoln in Illinois) and actress Kay Johnson, grew up on the East Coast. He attended Vermont's Middlebury College and studied acting and directing at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie-Mellon University) in Pittsburgh before beginning his career as an actor and stage manager at the Cleveland Playhouse.

He later toured the Deep South in the early 1960s (during the civil rights struggle) with the Free Southern Theatre, an integrated acting troupe that staged plays in primarily Black communities.

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