Cromwell, James
Cromwell as TNG's "Nayrok"
Hard-working actor James Cromwell made not just one but three appearances in guest roles across the Star Trek television series—two in heavy makeup—before he got the role of famed warp drive inventor Zefram Cochrane in 1996’s big-screen Star Trek: First Contact. And all that before gaining a 1995 Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor as Farmer Hoggett in Babe. His career also includes nominations for three Emmy Awards and four Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Cromwell's alien guises included the first-ever glimpses of a Yridian, Jaglom Shreck in TNG’s two-part “Birthright” (when he was hobbled by a broken leg suffered just before shooting), and a Karemma, Hanok, in DS9’s “Starship Down.” His very first role for Star Trek was the more humanoid Prime Minister Nayrok of TNG’s “The Hunted.”
A Los Angeles native who grew up in New York, Cromwell stands a towering 6-foot-7 and won acclaim for his role as the crooked police captain in the big-screen LA. Confidential—and warm memories as the dad character in the Revenge of the Nerds film comedies. Of late, Cromwell has had a run paying historical roles—as Prince Phillip in The Queen, President George Herman Walker Bush in Oliver Stone’s W, and President Lyndon B. Johnson in Flying Into Love.
