On television, Robbins played Secretary of State Walter Larson in the HBO comedy The Brink (2015), and in Here and Now (2018) portrayed Greg Boatwright.

His parents were Mary Cecelia (née Bledsoe), a musician,[3] and Gilbert Lee Robbins,[4] a singer, actor, and manager of The Gaslight Cafe.

[8][9] Robbins moved to Greenwich Village with his family at a young age while his father pursued a career as a member of a folk music group called The Highwaymen.

Robbins started performing in theater at age twelve and joined the drama club at Stuyvesant High School (Class of 1976).

[10] He spent two years at SUNY Plattsburgh and then returned to California to study at the UCLA Film School, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Drama in 1981.

His breakthrough role was as pitcher Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh in the baseball film Bull Durham (1988), in which he co-starred with Susan Sarandon and Kevin Costner.

Todd McCarthy in Variety commented that the film is "both a stimulating social satire and, for thinking people, a depressing commentary on the devolution of the American political system".

[15] Robbins has written, produced, and directed several films with strong social content, such as the capital punishment saga Dead Man Walking (1995), starring Sarandon and Sean Penn.

Robbins has also appeared in mainstream Hollywood thrillers, such as Arlington Road (also 1999) as a suspected terrorist and Antitrust (2001) as a malicious computer tycoon, and in comical films such as The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), Nothing to Lose (1997), and High Fidelity (2000).

He followed his Oscar-win with roles as a temporarily blind man who is nursed to health by a psychologically wounded young woman in The Secret Life of Words (2005) and an apartheid torturer in Catch a Fire (2006).

[17] In early 2006, Robbins directed[18] an adaptation of George Orwell's novel 1984, written by Michael Gene Sullivan[19] of the Tony Award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe.

He was originally offered the chance to record an album in 1992 after the success of his film Bob Roberts, but he declined because he had "too much respect for the process", having seen his father work so hard as a musician, and because he felt he had nothing to say at the time.

I watched the whole first season in New Orleans, and got in touch with David Simon and said, 'If you guys need a director next year, I'd be happy to do an episode.

[26] In fall of 2024, Robbins and the Actors' Gang presented a production of his play 'Topsy Turvy - Ramazuri' at the Csokonai National Theatre in Debrecen.

[35] He made critical statements against Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council while introducing Bernie Sanders at a 2016 campaign stop.

Robbins added that his villainous character in the television series Silo, a "leader who crushes any dissent or protest with swift violence", was inspired by pro-lockdown politicians.