She Likes to Watch

Just as we don’t always have room for every interesting tidbit that comes to light in our interviews, we also didn’t have room for every interesting interview tidbit we wanted to publish in today’s Ticket section. But we still want you to know about them, so we’ve published them here instead. Read on:

More of Sarah Linn’s interviews

James Cromwell
Best known as the tenderhearted pig farmer in “Babe,” James Cromwell seems too mild to be a political firebrand.

Spend a few minutes chatting with the lanky, Oscar-nominated actor about animal rights or the environment, however, and his gentle baritone rings with anger.
Cromwell appeared at the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival in March.
Cromwell credits his father, a film director who was blacklisted for nearly a decade for his political views, for setting him on a path of activism.

“He had cut out this little one-column squib from The New York Times … there was a theater that was touring the South that was auditioning for actors,” the actor recalled. “And Dad said, ‘Why don’t you go down and try?’ ”

That tour with the Free Southern Theater showed Cromwell the full injustice of 1960s-era segregation, he said, including whites-only restaurants and violent beatings and arrests.

Back in New York, he worked with the Black Panthers and joined the anti-war movement. Cromwell became a vegan and animal rights activist after starring in “Babe.”

“I’m a big supporter of throwing paint on fur coats. I know it’s incendiary and I know that it’s polarizing,” the fiery actor said. “You can’t give up.”

Rosanne Cash
Rosanne Cash could offer some advice about growing up in the limelight. The daughter of Johnny Cash and the stepdaughter of June Carter Cash, she rubbed elbows with some of country music’s biggest stars as a child and released her first chart-topping single at age 24.

More recently, though, the Grammy winner wowed critics and fans with “Black Cadillac,” an exploration of loss, love and redemption written after her parents and stepmother died in a two-year span.

Cash, who performed May 6 at the Cohan Center, is reluctant to call “Black Cadillac” a tribute album. In fact, she gets a bit peeved when anyone tries to apply extra meaning to her work.

OK, really peeved.

“When you go to Broadway and see a stage actor, you don’t think, ‘Oh, they’re being so public with themselves,’ ” she said. “You know what I mean? They’re an actor. They’re playing a part.”

Besides, added Cash with a chuckle, “It’s not as if I’m getting up reading pages from my diary.”

More of Patrick S. Pemberton’s interviews

Toots Hibbert
Sometimes I feel so … American. I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s just that I’m so accustomed to American accents, it can be difficult when someone talks like — well, like Toots Hibbert, whose Jamaican accent is thick. Really thick.

At one point, I know he was telling a good story, but I was completely lost. Then he said something like, “You know — Keith Richards?” And I was like, “Keith Richards?” And he said, “Sometimes I talk too fast and people don’t understand me.” To which I shamelessly tried to fake my way out of it and said, “Oh yeah, yeah — Keith Richards.”

So I think he had a good quote about Keith Richards, but you didn’t see it in the story.

Hibbert performed at Downtown Brew in September.

Ziggy Marley
Usually, journalists rush through celebrity interviews, hoping to squeeze in as many questions as possible before the allotted 15 minutes are up. But with Marley, who did not impose any time limit, I sort of gave up after 15 minutes. Let’s just say Ziggy isn’t much of a talker.

He was nice enough. And he didn’t get irritated when the inevitable questions about his father came up. (“My father is also one of my teachers, somebody I look up to musically. So I have no problem speaking about him.”) It’s just that a good source expands on things a bit. Which is to say that tired yes and no — or other one-word — answers aren’t always desirable during an interview.

Marley appeared at Avila Beach Resort in March.

— Tribune features staff