There was a time when James Woods was most famous for films like Videodrome and Casino, and a speciality for playing leathery sleazes and crooked gangsters. But in the past year his right-wing soundbites and Twitter trolling have come to eclipse much of his acting work, leading to significant controversy and, this week, a brutal dismissal by his agent, who celebrated Independence Day by dropping him as a client.

“It’s the 4th of July and I’m feeling patriotic,” Gersh Agency associate Ken Kaplan wrote to Woods in an email, which Woods shared on Twitter. “I don’t want to represent you anymore. I mean I can go on a rant but you know what I’d say.”

While Woods responded in kind (“I was thinking if you’re feeling patriotic, you would appreciate free speech and one’s right to think as an individual”), his reply felt at odds with his online presence, which regularly bounces between conspiracy-leaden histrionics and anti-Democrat toxicity.

For a traditionally left-wing town, Woods has long been one of its most vocal conservative. But while Woods’s provocative opinions were more or less confined to print magazines throughout his Eighties and Nineties peak (he was rallying against the Clintons long before Hillary had presidential aspirations), he has blossomed as a cult figure of right-wing snark in the age of social media, with a Twitter following of over a million avid Trumpsters.