Age: 86
male
James Oliver Cromwell (born January 27, 1940) is an American film and television actor. He is best known for his role as Dr. Zefram Cochrane in “Star Trek: First Contact,” as well as his roles in “Babe,” “L.A. Confidential,” and “Spider-Man 3.” He has been nominated for an Oscar, three Emmy Awards, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards during his career. Cromwell was born in Los Angeles, California and was raised in Manhattan, New York. He was adopted by actress Kay Johnson and actor, director and producer John Cromwell, who was blacklisted during the McCarthy era. He was educated at The Hill School, Middlebury College and Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), where he studied engineering. Like both his parents, he was drawn to the theater, doing everything from Shakespeare to experimental plays. He has long been an advocate of leftist causes. In an October 2008 interview, he strongly attacked the Republican Party and the George W. Bush administration, saying their controversial foreign policy would "either destroy us or the entire planet." He became a vegetarian in 1974 after seeing a stockyard in Texas and experiencing the "smell, terror and anxiety." He became an ethical vegan while playing the character of Farmer Hoggett in the movie Babe in 1995. He frequently speaks out on issues regarding animal cruelty for PETA, largely the treatment of pigs. Cromwell was married to Anne Ulvestad from 1976 to 1986. They had three children. He married his second wife, Julie Cobb, on May 29, 1986.
In the middle of New York City, characters from the old stories and fairy tales live among us in exile. Bill Willingham has taken characters we've grown up with, including Snow White, Bigby (a.k.a the Big Bad) Wolf, Jack Horner, Cinderella, Pinocchio, Boy Blue, the Frog Prince and many more, and spins them into a realistic, modern day setting. The characters we, the people of the Mundane World, thought were fictional have come to the real world to escape The Emperor/The Adversary, a despotic conqueror of tremendous power who rules over The Empire. Eventually, a number of these characters, heroes and villains alike, decide to put aside their differences and stick together in their own community. Old crimes are forgiven by signing a compact which makes them a citizen of this community, and also forbids them from revealing their true nature to the "mundies". Non-human characters who can't afford a spell to make them look human are consigned to a secluded "farm" in Upstate New York. However, those old crimes are rarely, if ever, forgotten; a major early plot point is that Bigby Wolf is banned from said "farm" for all the atrocities he committed before he reformed.
