Tim Robbins actor, director, writer and activist, talks to Donald Clarke about politics, working with Clint Eastwood and hangovers.
Tim Robbins - all six feet, four inches of him - is not looking too happy with the world. Eyes hidden behind Lucozade-coloured sunglasses, he keeps his head perfectly immobile and speaks achingly slowly as if each word has to be dragged from a very deep hole. Jetlag? "No, no. Just a hangover," he says. "You know what it's like on the road."
I'm impressed. Heavy drinking is about as popular with the average Hollywood star as reading books or growing old. But, I suppose, neither Robbins nor his long-time partner, Susan Sarandon, could be called average. In the 15 years since they met on the set of the baseball and shagging drama, Bull Durham, they have evolved into the thinking liberal's Taylor and Burton: ecologically aware, politically energised, socially conscious. (So, not like Taylor and Burton at all then.) Sometimes their elevation to the level of secular saints by the Michael Moore-reading classes can grate a little. But that is hardly their fault, and they take more than their fair share of abuse from more bellicose voices in US society, you cannot stay angry with them for too long.
Earlier this year, Robbins was the victim of a particularly childish outburst of right-wing spite when the Baseball Hall of Fame abruptly cancelled his planned appearance to celebrate 15th anniversary of Bull Durham. It seems the couple's opposition to the war in Iraq had not gone down well.
"But, you know, something funny happened," he says. "That story crossed over to the back pages. Free speech was being defended by sports writers. Here we had taken something that was supposed to be an attack and turned it into something positive. Sportswriters were on TV saying how disgraceful this was. It went right across the board politically. People from right and left were defending us."
Among those from the right who stood up for him was Clint Eastwood, the director of the rather splendid new mystery, Mystic River, in which Robbins stars alongside Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Laurence Fishburne.
"I was moved that he supported me," Robbins says. "And I was moved that Kevin Costner, who is also conservative, supported me. It made me wonder where all the liberals were that didn't stand up for us."
This is just one incident among many that has made life difficult for Robbins and Sarandon in recent times. Perhaps their most troubling moment was when the Washington Post published a piece suggesting that Sarandon's mother believed the couple was politically brainwashing her grandson.
Does this sort of intrusion ever make Robbins feel he should stop speaking out just to get some peace?.
"No. Actually that was the thing that made me get really loud. They began f--king with my kids and they crossed the line. I don't like bullies. They can say whatever they want about me, and they have. But talking about a 13-year-old was low. That got the Irish up in me."
Robbins's liberal politics and interest in the arts were instilled in him at an early age. The son of folk singer Gil Robbins, he grew up in Greenwich Village and began acting at 12. In 1981, he formed The Actors' Gang, an LA company which sought to bring a punk rock sensibility to theatre. Small roles in bad films followed, but Bull Durham in 1988 changed everything. His performance as the dim-witted pitcher who gets seduced by Sarandon's erudite baseball fanatic suggested that a generation might have found its own Jimmy Stewart.
"Yeah, I went off to North Carolina and met the greatest woman," he says wistfully. "And it kind of shifted my energy and focus. I finally moved back east, which was something I had wanted to do, but couldn't, because, if you are in showbusiness, it is probably best to be in LA. When Bull Durham came out I became a different animal. I was sent better scripts. I was suddenly in better movies." He pauses and lets out a puff of air: "Wow! 15 years ago."
Sarandon and Robbins have two children and, while their colleagues in the business have kept California's divorce lawyers in Ferraris, they have remained together (though have never married). How have they managed it?
"Well, not being in Hollywood probably helps," he laughs. "Really, it makes a significant difference living in New York. Who knows what it is? The stars? The ability to have conversations with each other? The ability to make each other laugh? I really don't know."
Every aspect of the couple's public life appears to be coloured by politics. In 1995, Sarandon won an Oscar for her portrayal of Sister Helen Prejean in Robbins's film, Dead Man Walking, which concerned itself with the arguments surrounding the morality of the death penalty. His other two films as director - Bob Roberts (about a right-wing senatorial campaign) and Cradle Will Rock (about the US Federal Theatre Project of the 1930s) - have been similarly politically engaged.
"Actually I don't think my films are particularly political," he says. "Well, maybe Bob Roberts was because it was actually about US politics. But I try carefully to be even-handed. When you say political it suggests that somebody is doing things for a very precise purpose."
It might just be the hangover, but Robbins turns a little bit prickly here or maybe he's just tired of being caricatured as a relentless issue junkie. But he surely must recognise that each of his films is "about something".
Let's tackle it from the opposite direction. Could he ever see himself directing a straight-up genre picture?
"But why wouldn't that be political? Why is an action-adventure movie that advocates vengeance not political? Vigilante justice is the death penalty. Why does nobody regard that sort of film as political?"
Which brings us nicely to Mystic River. In a sense, Eastwood's epic mystery tale, which touches on the dangers of vigilantism, is the exact reverse of the hypothetical action picture we have been discussing. Robbins, Bacon and Penn play three blue-collar Boston men, friends since childhood, who are thrown together again by tragedy. When ex-con Penn's daughter gets murdered, Bacon, now a police officer, is forced to consider Robbins, who is still deeply troubled after being abducted and abused while a boy, as a suspect.
How did Robbins get on with Eastwood, the genial, old-school conservative? They can't have had much in common politically.
"Well, I'm probably more conservative than you might think," he says. "I want to conserve certain values that are in the constitution. What we have now is a bunch of neo-conservative radicals in Washington who want to circumnavigate the constitution."
Er, OK, then. Let's see if it is possible to steer away from this area altogether. How hard was it to divorce the Eastwood legend from the human being?
"Interestingly, it happens right away. He really makes you feel at ease very quickly. He is a very humble person. He's a loyal person. He's got people that have worked with him for 50 years. He carries his own bags and makes you feel a part of the process immediately."
Magnificently absorbing as this old-fashioned saga is, Mystic River features something of a scenery chewing competition between the three main leads. This is a real clash of heavyweights, with Penn's method fury bashing up against Robbins's internalised angst. Does professional rivalry ever come into play?
"No, no, no," he says solemnly. "What good would that do? Competition doesn't work in acting. We're not sportsmen. If you compete you're dead. Chemistry in acting has everything to do with generosity. If you have a guy who just wants to draw attention to himself that can be disastrous; he ends up making everyone else look bad. You just need one asshole. And that didn't happen here."
Finally shaking himself out of his torpor, he begins to laugh: "You wanted more juice than that, didn't you? You wanted salaciousness? The assholes are out there. I've worked with them. Just not in this movie."
So, I guess he is too polite to tell us who they are. "Well, I might. But not today."
Maybe with his hangover he might let his guard down.
"Oh yeah, give me a couple of drinks and then I might. Ha ha!"
Mystic River opens next Friday