I literally had no idea about his activism. He’s quite the fascinating character when off-screen.

Cromwell certainly looks and sounds the part of an old lefty who might have a Che Guevara poster in the attic and consider Bernie Sanders to be too soft on capitalism. When the Guardian visits his home – a log cabin in the farming town of Warwick, upstate New York, where he lives with his third wife, the actor Anna Stuart – he rises from a chair at the hearth with a warm greeting and outstretched hand (it is a big hand that would have required a generous dollop of glue).

Cromwell stands at 6ft 7in tall like a great weathered oak. “Probably 10 years ago, I heard somebody smart say we’re already a fascist state,” he says. “We have turnkey fascism. The key is in the lock. All they have to do is the one thing to turn it and open Pandora’s box. Out will come every exception, every loophole that the Congress has written so assiduously into their legislation.”

Cromwell has seen this movie before. His father John Cromwell, a renowned Hollywood director and actor, was blacklisted during the McCarthy era of anti-communist witch-hunts merely for making comments at a party praising aspects of the Russian theatre system for nurturing young talent and contrasting it with the “used up” culture of Hollywood.