Born:
January 27, 1940
in
Los Angeles
Best Known For:
Playing the farmer in Babe.
Early-life:
Born John Oliver Cromwell on January 27, 1940, in Los Angeles. He was raised in New York and Connecticut by actress mother Kay Johnson, and director father John Cromwell. After attending Middlebury College and Carnegie Institute of Technology, he went on to study acting. His first professional work came in the theatre, where he appeared in everything from experimental plays to Shakespeare.
Career:
He made his first TV appearances in 1974 with roles in long-running sitcom All in the Family and hit detective show The Rockford Files. His first film, Murder by Death, was released two years later. He continued to work in theatre, films and TV, cropping up in The Man with Two Brains, Revenge of the Nerds and Dream West, before landing an Oscar nomination for Babe in 1995. The film made him a famous face, and since then, he's starred in Star Trek: First Contact, The People vs Larry Flynt, Babe: Pig in the City, The Green Mile, Space Cowboys, and I, Robot.
Quote:
On his Oscar nomination for Babe: "Andy Warhol said everybody gets their 15 minutes of fame. And if this is mine, I couldn't imagine a better 15 minutes."
Trivia:
In 2013, he won a Primetime Emmy for his role in American Horror Story: Asylum.