Rockin' Robbins

There are three things in life that Tim Robbins is passionate about - Susan Sarandon, his partner of a dozen years, his films, of which there are two dozen, and politics, which he's been flirting with for almost 30 years. 'I was performing in agit-prop street theatre at the age of 12 and I'm 41 now, so I guess that for me, art and politics have always been connected,' he says. 'It's my pleasure to fiddle with the connections and do a little fusework!'

Robbins laughs uproariously. There's a sense of whimsy about him with his wild, anarchic spirit but politely closed exterior. A tall man (6ft 4in) in jeans, collapsed into a canvas chair, he still has a bit of a rounded baby face with soft features and quizzical eyes. He has none of life's wrinkles marking his journey so far.

His latest film, Cradle Will Rock, which garnered rave notices when it premiered at Cannes last year, is the story of a radical 1937 pro-unionist, anti-capitalist musical called The Cradle Will Rock directed in New York by Orson Welles. The production ran into problems and was dramatically closed down on the eve of its opening amid political and financial rows with its backers. Packed with political concerns and dark humour, this clarion call for freedom of expression is actor/director Robbins's most politically inflammatory offering yet.

Choc-full of stars (John Cusack as Nelson Rockefeller, Bill Murray, Emily Watson, Vanessa Redgrave, Hank Azaria, Rub?n Blades as Mexican artist Diego Rivera, and Sarandon as Mussolini's mistress Margherita Sarfatti), the film has been a labour of love for Robbins, who says he put his neck on the line for several fraught years to get it into the can. 'I was told an amazing story about the night this show was performed when the theatre was closed down,' he explains. 'The actors continued to perform on the fly, in an abandoned theatre for an evening that has become legendary in the annals of Broadway history. I realised that was a wonderful ending for a movie, so what I had to do was fill in the blanks and create a story, based on history, that would arrive at this abandoned theatre. It was a subject that absolutely reflects my feelings on the matter of art and politics.'

It would be safe to say that Tim Robbins and the political elite don't rub along that easily together. Dating back to his early street-protest theatre days in the Nixon/Watergate days, he's been an irritant to whoever's in the White House. He says chirpily that since President Clinton's been on board he's been audited for tax twice and there have been plenty of other times they've tried to damp him down. Then, of course, there are his films - Bob Roberts, a 1992 mock-umentary about a 'fictional' American political campaign, and now Cradle Will Rock. Maybe the powers that be would rather he stuck to the likes of The Shawshank Redemption, The Hudsucker Proxy and The Player, but he's an important guy in Hollywood.

'There's always been pressure on artists to censor themselves,' says Robbins evenly and slowly. 'I think the enemy today in the USA is self-censorship. There's the rocky road and there's the easy road. Everyone knows that if you're very polite and go to all the right parties and shake the right hands and kiss the right ass you're going to go a lot further in your career. However, there is one thing that prevents you from doing that - the nausea you might get from having done it. But then, there are varying degrees of nausea. But, huh, I don't like feeling sick. It's no fun. I'd rather take the rocky road.'

The road Robbins has taken may only have been round the block, from the childhood apartment in Greenwich Village to a loft conversion not far away, but it's covered a fair bit of ground. An overgrown child of the Sixties counter-culture, he was born in California and raised in New York, one of four, the son of folk singer Gil Robbins of The Highwaymen, and a mother who worked for a publishing company. They took their kids to anti-Vietnam demonstrations and civil-rights marches and brought them up to appreciate a good education and conservation. 'At 12 I was doing street theatre and at 15 I was being paid $20 a week playing H.R. Haldeman (one of President Nixon's men) in a kind of vaudeville song-and-dance routine featuring Haldeman, Erlichman and Dean. When I went to college in '76 I was shocked that there were these "other kinds of people" because I was used to freaks and super-creative people who were around the Village at the time.

'I went to UCLA to learn how to direct theatre. I didn't take any acting courses. Pretty much all the acting teachers I ran into had this bitter or dark side to them. Their whole approach was dependent upon the students being reverent to them and I don't think you can learn to act in those circumstances.

'However, you've gotta make a living and I managed to get work in a "get laid" movie called Fraternity Vacation. Then I had a run of playing sort of psycho killers in terrible TV series. A six-week job like that would keep me for six months with enough over to put a play on.'

He was Tom Cruise's co-pilot Merlin in Top Gun and then came the goofy, garter-wearing pitcher 'Nuke' Laloosh, Bull Durham's wild man of baseball. The film not only brought him box-office ratings but also his willowy co-star, Susan Sarandon, mother of his two sons and fellow political activist. As co-presenters of the Academy Awards in '93, they seized a chance to bring public attention to the plight of a few hundred Haitians with Aids who had been interned in Guantanamo Bay. They also often collaborate professionally: their Dead Man Walking was one of the great films of 1995. 'I like shop talk at the dinner table,' he says. 'We understand each other's language. We have a wonderful family life.'