Star Trek Actor James Cromwell Jailed Following Protest

Emmy-award winning actor James Cromwell is going to be spending a week in an Orange County Jail.

The 77-year-old actor’s sentence is the result of his refusal to pay a $375 fine following his arrest during a protest in Wawayanda, New York.

Cromwell and six others were found guilty of obstructing traffic during a sit-in at the proposed future site of a natural gas-fired power plant owned by Competitive Power Ventures. The protesters say they are concerned that the CPV power plant’s carbon emissions could immediately harm the local environment and will accelerate global climate change.

Cromwell was one of three protesters who refused to pay the fine. “If we don’t stay together, nothing will change,” Cromwell told the Times-Herald Record after refusing to pay his fine (according to Variety). “Power to the people.”

Cromwell is a Star Trek alum who is best known to fans for playing Zefram Cochrane, the creator of the warp drive and a key figure in the history of the Star Trek universe, in the 1996 film Star Trek: First Contact. Prior to the film, Cromwell had appeared three times on Star Trek television. His first appearance was as Prime Minister Nayrok in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Hunted.” His later appearances were under heavy alien makeup. He played the Yridian called Jaglom Shreck in the Star Trek: The Next Generation two-parter “Birthright” and also the Karemma called Hanok in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Starship Down.”

Cromwell has been nominated for four Emmy Awards, four Screen Actors Guild Awards, and an Academy Award. His non-Star Trek roles include American Horror Story: Asylum, for which he won an Emmy, an Oscar-nominated supporting role in Babe, as well as TV shows Six Feet Under, 24, and Halt and Catch Fire and films L.A. Confidential, The Green Mile, Space Cowboys, The Sum of All Fears, I,Robot, The Longest Yard, The Queen, Secretariat, and The Artist. He’s next set to appear in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

In Star Trek: First Contact, the Enterprise and its crew follow a Borg ship through a time warp to prevent the Borg from taking over the Earth in a past era. Stuck in the past, Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) helps a pioneer of space travel (James Cromwell) in his efforts to create the first warp drive while Capt. Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Cmdr. Data (Brent Spiner) battle the Borg Queen (Alice Krige) as she tries to take over the Enterprise.

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