James Cromwell’s memory gets a little fuzzy when it comes to how many times he’s been arrested by the fuzz.
“Oh, I lose track,” the actor, 83, admitted to Page Six exclusively at the “Succession” Season 4 premiere last Monday. “Seven or eight times, maybe more.”
Cromwell has been a longtime supporter of progressive causes, especially regarding animal rights.
He became a vegetarian in 1974 and then a vegan while playing the beloved character of Farmer Hoggett in the 1995 film “Babe.”
The “Green Mile” star was most recently arrested in May 2022 when he superglued his hand to a Starbucks counter to protest the coffee chain’s surcharge for vegan milks.
Appearing on a Facebook livestream at the time, Cromwell orated about the cons of producing dairy milk from cows as he remained stuck to the counter in Midtown Manhattan alongside other PETA activists.
“The glue was fun. I had a lot of fun with that one,” he gleefully recalled to us before explaining that it did not hurt to remove.
“Just acetone [is needed to get rid of glue]. It’s not very good for your skin, but it comes off,” he added. “Never quite fast enough for the police who have come because they’re all sitting there wondering how soon I’m gonna get out.”
Cromwell noted that because the cops had used the potent chemical to unglue him, the beanery had to be shut down for the day and fumigated.
“Which is good,” he explained, “because what they were doing was horrendously stupid. Charging for nondairy creamers — which they don’t do in Europe.
“And that means putting people who can’t have dairy, forcing them to pay more for something that doesn’t cost them as much. So they’re just making a profit off of somebody else’s either political opinion or because they have a lactose intolerance.”
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Some of the statuesque actor’s previous arrests took place at a July 2017 PETA protest against SeaWorld’s treatment of orca whales and an October 2019 demonstration at A&M University, where he called for the school to shut down a laboratory that used dogs for medical research.
Cromwell’s activism has not stopped him from booking work, though.
The Emmy-winning “American Horror Story: Asylum” star is critical of his “Succession” character, Logan Roy’s estranged brother, Ewan Roy, describing him as “sort of a lefty” who “missed the boat.”
“Because if he was really a lefty, he would have given it all away — and his 100,000-acre ranch — and spread it out among people who really need it,” he noted. “You can do a lot of good when you have that kind of wealth. And he doesn’t. He bitches and moans about somebody who has even more than him.”
Other stars at the premiere for the show’s final season, which premieres March 26 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO, included Brian Cox, Kieran Culkin, J. Smith-Cameron and Jeremy Strong.
