Back with his new film Day of the Fight, the reluctant star recalls anxiety about his looks, a strange dinner with Guillermo del Toro, spats with Trump and Weinstein … and hints at his plan to save the world

Ron Perlman could be mistaken for Will Ferrell’s grumpy older brother. Today, however, he mostly looks trapped. That slab of a face, frosted with a white beard and moustache, seems too formidable to be contained by the narrow vertical frame of his iPad camera. Wearing a stonewashed grey denim jacket over a black shirt, he peers down at me, brow crinkled, as if from a great height. It’s like being on a Zoom call with Goliath.

Though he introduces himself as “Ron from Brooklyn”, the actor, who is a few weeks shy of 75, is sitting at home in Los Angeles. No, the fires didn’t touch him, but the nearest ones were only three miles away, close enough to make him jittery. “Scary times,” he says. His voice rumbles like a freight train. Tom Waits, whom he was once plausibly but falsely rumoured to be playing in a movie, sounds like Charles Hawtrey by comparison.