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James Oliver Cromwell (born January 27, 1940) is an American film and television actor. Some of his more notable roles are in Babe (1995), for which he earned Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, L.A. Confidential (1997), The Green Mile (1999), and in the television series Six Feet Under (2003-2005). 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 is the son of 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). Like his parents, he was drawn to the theater, performing in everything from Shakespeare to experimental plays.
Cromwell's first television performance was in a 1974 episode of The Rockford Files playing Terry. A few weeks later, he began a recurring role as Stretch Cunningham on All in the Family. In 1975, he took his first lead role on television as Bill Lewis in the short-lived Hot l Baltimore, and a year later he made his film debut in Neil Simon's classic detective spoof Murder by Death.