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Long-legged and lean, clad in mechanic’s coveralls, his hair slicked back, eyes hidden behind Wayfarer shades, Tim Robbins is a figure of both solitude and magnetism, a vision of cool as he stands outside the Hopewell, New Jersey service station that doubles this day as a movie location. "The giant Elvis," remarks an assistant director, and Robbins cracks a smile. "That was for a skit we had for Saturday Night Live," he says, "but it never ran." Pause. "It was too funny," he adds, not without a note of irony. The shrug. The cool. The I’m-smarter-than-you-but-who-cares demeanor. It all adds up to the very tall, very talented and, these days, very visible Tim Robbins a movie star poised to capture the title of America’s hardest-working box-office attraction. In the past six months alone he has appeared in three major films: as a man who is wrongly convicted of murder and sent to prison in The Shawshank Redemption, as a Fifties garage mechanic posing as a physicist in order to woo Albert Einstein’s niece (Meg Ryan) in IQ, directed by Fred Schepisi, and romancing Julia Roberts in Robert Altman’s high-fashion mystery-comedy, Pret-a-Porter.

At 36, Robbins is a unique blend of baby boomer and slacker a Sixties-style social activist with a soft spot for the loud, hard, in-your-face attitude of Generation X. As an intelligent and outspoken social critic, he is capable of ruffling establishment feathers whether with the biting political satire Bob Roberts or with his public denunciation of the Clinton administration’s Haiti policy. He made the Haitian plea while presenting an Oscar at the 1993 Academy Awards ceremony; he was also one of the few in Hollywood to speak out against the Persian Gulf war. And through it all, Robbins manages to remain a committed father of two and stepfather of one in his relationship with actress Susan Sarandon, with whom he has lived since shortly after they finished filming Bull Durham in 1988.

Robbins was born on October 16, 1958 in West Covina, California and moved with his parents and three older siblings from California to New York’s Greenwich Village when he was just two. His father, Gil, was an actor and a member of the folk music group the Highwaymen (Michael [Row the Boat Ashore]). Gil Robbins also co-managed the Gaslight café, where young Tim would do odd jobs while watching new careers blossom including Tom Paxton’s, Dave Van Ronk’s and Cat Stevens’.

He discovered theater when he was 12, tagging along with his sisters to New York’s Theater for the New City. For the next seven years he worked there in any job that needed filling, from actor to lighting technician. He followed that with performing street theater throughout the city’s neighborhoods, a rugged experience that gave Robbins the gumption to begin directing plays in high school and later at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. After two years at SUNY, he moved to California and enrolled at UCLA. In Los Angeles Robbins and several classmates formed the Actors’ Gang, an offbeat, iconoclastic troupe that debuted with a critically acclaimed midnight run of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu the King. Even as he was developing the Gang’s repertoire (he is still its artistic director), Hollywood tapped his acting skills first for guest spots on such TV dramas as St. Elsewhere and Hill Street Blues, then for a variety of film roles, including a stint in a lowbrow comedy called Fraternity Vacation and a bit part in Top Gun. A wonderfully comic if small turn in Rob Reiner’s The Sure Thing (opposite friend John Cusack) led to choicer assignments: as the socially conscious Bronx tough in the underrated Five Corners and as a goofy scientist in the box-office bomb Howard the Duck. But it was his performance as the flaky pitcher Ebby "Nuke" LaLoosh in Ron Shelton’s 1988 hit, Bull Durham, that lit the fuse on Robbins’ career. Holding his own opposite the likes of newcomer Kevin Costner and Sarandon, Robbins was a comic marvel: mangling the song Try a Little Tenderness, heaving wild pitches and, most memorably, stepping up to the mound wearing a woman’s garter belt for luck.

Still, it would take four years of strong roles in lesser films (Jacob’s Ladder, Miss Firecracker, Cadillac Man) before Robbins’ big breakthrough in 1992. That year, he received the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for his performance as the morally ambivalent movie executive Griffin Mill in Altman’s The Player, a coruscating look at Hollywood in which the harassed exec murders a writer and gets away with it. Robbins followed that by writing and starring in Bob Roberts (also his directorial debut), a prescient documentary send-up about a political campaign that seems to have predicted everything from the rise of Ross Perot to Bill Clinton’s sax-tooting on late-night TV.

In the wake of Bob Roberts, Robbins promptly scored twice more as a hilariously duplicitous highway patrolman in Altman’s Short Cuts and as the good-hearted but dumb mailroom boy turned executive patsy in Joel and Ethan Coen’s screwball comedy The Hudsucker Proxy. "Robbins has the gift of looking just right for each of his roles, and he has a puckish, commanding presence," remarked Pauline Kael after seeing Jacob’s Ladder. "He makes you feel that behind his sneaky, demon eyes, he’s thinking thoughts no character in a movie has ever thought before."

We sent journalist Marshall Fine, whose previous Playboy Interview was with Howard Stern, to talk with Robbins. Here’s Fine’s report: "I caught up with Robbins on the set of IQ, where we spoke at length over the course of two days. He seemed eager to talk and cleared all free moments to do so: through his lunch hours and for 10- and 20-minute clips between scenes. He is a deliberate talker. Bright, wary and intent to not say anything he doesn’t mean, he often paused thoughtfully before answering a question. Listening to the tapes, I clocked one suck pause at 15 seconds. "And that’s when he’s talking about something he’s interested in discussing. Ask him a question about his personal life specifically about Sarandon and he instantly shuts up, smiling enigmatically, then dropping a noncommittal response or a coy one-liner.

"I waited until the end of the interview to try my own hand at the personal questions. As you’ll see, his reaction was pure Robbins. But first, we began with his brain."

PLAYBOY: When people talk about you, they always seem to mention your intelligence. Because your recent film is called IQ, we’d like to know: What’s yours?

ROBBINS: I don’t know. I’ve never had it tested.

P: You’ve never gone back to look for it in your school records?

R: No, no, I would never do that. I’ve never been administered an IQ test. But in high school I was a B student. College, I was a little bit better.

P: Does the fact that your intelligence is even worth commenting on imply that most actors aren’t very smart?

R: I wouldn’t know. Most of the good actors have a huge intelligence about the human condition and a real open heart to different kinds of people and behavior. There are dumb actors. But there are dumb politicians and dumb bakers. I suppose the broad generalization about actors has to do with the need on the actors’ part and also on the part of people who write articles about actors to place appearance and glamour above intelligence.

P: Let’s talk about politics.

R: Oh, cutting right to the chase.

P: Sure, why not?

R: Why don’t I just talk about my personal life? [Laughs]

P: We’ll get to that. Why are politically active actors often portrayed as dilettantes?

R: Well, it depends on who we’re talking about. Some are that way. Certainly some of the people who get involved in politics or social causes could be better informed for the good of the cause.

P: Care to mention any names?

R: No. But, personally, I view it as my responsibility to continue to be what I’ve always been. I’ve always been involved with the society at large. When someone who has access to those outlets chooses to talk about it, they’re jumped on. You know, "What right have actors to talk about things?" But what is that saying that we should listen just to economists and lawyers and people who are paid by special interest groups to have opinions? Scientists who are on the payroll of the cigarette companies? There aren’t a whole lot of actors and celebrities who speak out anymore. When someone is publicly castigated, it has an effect. You think. Should I do this? Should I buck this trend? Or should I just shut up and not worry about this stuff? Because it’s going to cost me professionally. I think most people opt for the latter.

P: Your most political film, Bob Roberts, was criticized as having an ax to grind and for preaching to the converted.

R: I disagree, because it also got attacked from the left – or what the media characterize as the left, which would be your standard-issue, liberal, middle-of-the-road moderates, as far as I’m concerned. That’s actually what I took the most delight in: the response from those moderates. We also got a positive response from Republicans who saw the movie and loved it. I asked them why and they said, "Because we don’t want Bob Roberts in our party." There are a great number of Republicans who are economically conservative but have hearts and a consciousness about their country.

P: Realistically, where do you think most of Hollywood sits on the political spectrum?

R: Moderate to right wing.

P: Why?

R: Because I don’t really see a lot of progressive work being done there. It’s certainly a lot more difficult to get a project made if you’re talking about something progressive. That’s just the nature of the industry, I suppose. There have been people who have had progressive minds and hearts, who have had the courage to step outside the mainstream and make a statement. But they are not the majority.

P: Then why do Republicans continue to harp on Hollywood as a haven of left-wing liberals?

R: They also portray the media as very left wing, which is a huge lie. But if you’re a magician, you don’t want the audience looking certain places during a magic trick. So you divert their attention elsewhere. A noise, a light, a sound. Republicans do that, too. If the news organizations would give [other matters] a fraction of the time they’ve given to the OJ Simpson case, we would be an incredibly informed, aware society. Can you imagine if they spent that kind of time telling us where our tax dollars go? The American people are not evil. Given information, they will do the right thing. But they’re not given the information. Haiti is a good example. When Susan [Sarandon] and I spoke out about Haiti at the Oscars, that had been going on for three years, but there was simply no information certainly not on any network news program.

P: Gilbert Cates, the producer of the Oscar telecast, was very public last year in saying that he had not invited you and Susan back.

R: He was?

P: He said that people who had been politically outspoken the year before he mentioned you two and Richard Gere had specifically not been invited back.

R: Well, he would have been very comfortable in a fascist society. They would have loved him. It’s that kind of person who is a real detriment to a democracy. When you have a person in power who punishes people for speaking their mind, it’s truly dangerous to this society. Someone should call him to task for it. It can’t be me because I’ve got a personal involvement. Although I couldn’t care less about being a presenter at the Oscars.

P: Why do you think there was such an outcry?

R: Maybe the answer is in the result. People shut up. People don’t speak their mind after something like that happens. We were talking about a disgrace. We were talking about the US government in effect running a concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay for people who had tested positive for HIV. Maybe people just didn’t want to hear that. But I thought it was the height of hypocricy that, in a room filled with red ribbons, which were supposed to signify an awareness of and compassion for people with HIV and AIDS, there could be this kind of reaction. When people talk about inappropriate I would love to know when the appropriate time is to talk about a concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay. Should there be a day for this, a national protest day when everyone gets to speak their mind in public? It’s ridiculous, the concept of whether something is appropriate or not.

P: What has your activism cost you personally?

R: I don’t think it has cost me anything. I think it’s given me strength and satisfaction. If you’re in the position to help someone and you do it, it’s very rewarding.

P: Who is more political, you or Susan?

R: Well, I don’t know about that word political.

P: Who’s more conscious on a daily basis?

R: Susan is.

P: How?

R: She’s more involved on a day-to-day basis. I tend to take that energy and try to write. She’ll work actively with organizations more than I will.

P: If you were in charge of a TV network, how would you cover the next presidential election?

R: I would give everyone equal access. I mean everyone even the lunatics. Because when you make the judgement as a network that there are only three candidates, you are censoring points of view. I mean, what are they scared of? Who’s going to vote for anyone from the Communist Party, for God’s sake? You know? People don’t want that.

P: Has President Clinton been a disappointment to you?

R: In some ways, yes. He was never my guy. But I’m glad he’s in rather than Bush or Perot. I think he’s been subject to relentless attacks since before he was inaugurated by the Republican Party, by certain factions of the Democratic party, by doctors, by the military and by people in the press who are beholden to those interests. I don’t care about his haircuts or his affairs or any of that stuff. But there are a lot of powerful people who have a lot to lose, and that’s a large part of the reason he’s been attacked so relentlessly from the beginning.