Getting arrested is nothing new to character actor James Cromwell. The “Succession” star has been cuffed numerous times while taking a stand for various issues, including animal rights and the environment.
The 79-year-old, whose play “Grand Horizons” opened on Broadway last week, says that being a celebrity makes no difference when getting arrested.
“They put the cuffs on just as hard,” he told Page Six. “They stick you in the back of a car that I can’t get into.”
But the 6-foot-6 actor did concede that being famous helped him out of a potentially scary situation while spending three days in the clink in 2017, after he refused to pay a fine related to his arrest at a power plant near his home in Warwick, New York.
The “Babe” star recounted that he wanted to be put in general population but, “the way they make their bones in prison is to rape or beat up some guy. What better guy to beat or rape than a movie star?”
“So [prison officials] knew, ‘Oh boy don’t put him in there!’” He continued. “So my celebrity got me out of a very difficult situation.”
Cromwell, who is a passionate Bernie Sanders supporter, is dismissive of Hillary Clinton and her disparaging comments about the Vermont senator in which she claimed that, “he got nothing done,” and was “a career politician.”
“I think the Clintons are about as divorced from how ordinary Americans feel and suffer as a political family I can think of,” he opined. “She knows nothing except what’s in the Beltway, that’s why she can say people don’t like him, they don’t want to work with him.’”