He’s Not Just Playing an Activist Role : ‘VH1 Honors’ telecast recognizing musicians with a cause has a more than suitable host in actor-director Tim Robbins.

Tim Robbins isn’t a protest singer--he just played one in the film “Bob Roberts.”

But he is a social activist, both in real life and in the two movies he’s written and directed--the political satire “Bob Roberts” and the death penalty drama “Dead Man Walking.” The latter not only stimulated debate about capital punishment, but also earned Robbins’ companion Susan Sarandon a best actress Oscar last month.

Despite those high-profile rewards, Robbins senses that a lot of people would prefer that he and other outspoken entertainers scrap the activism.

“It’s been discouraged by a lot of condescending talk about celebrities,” he says, sitting in the Hollywood theater operated by the Actors Gang, the drama group he co-founded 15 years ago. “ ‘How dare they? . . . Who wants to hear an actor talk about their opinions?’--vilifying people who do step out in front. I certainly think there’s a message out there to shut up.

“Maybe people are uncomfortable with people who are altruistic. . . . ‘We’ll marginalize you as some kind of dopey liberal.’ ”

Such sentiment will be absent on Sunday, however, when Robbins hosts the “VH1 Honors” at the Universal Amphitheatre. It’s the cable music channel’s third annual concert recognizing pop music figures for their work on behalf of social, political and environmental causes.

This year the sold-out concert (which will be televised live on VH1) benefits the Witness program--an organization that supplies video cameras to people in human rights “hot spots” in order to document rights abuses. A special award will go to Witness co-founder Peter Gabriel, with Joan Osborne, R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, Natalie Merchant, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Pete Townshend among the other honorees and performers.

Robbins’ hosting duties aren’t solely due to the activism he’s practiced while making his mark in Hollywood. This is, in fact, long-familiar turf.

“I’ve always to some degree been involved in issues since my childhood,” he says. “That’s just who I am personally, and I don’t see any reason to change because I’ve been given more access by being an actor. I don’t think it’s important that all actors or all people in the public eye speak out on social issues. It’s just who I am.”

The roots of his activism are in Greenwich Village, where Robbins, 38, grew up. His father, Gil Robbins, was a member of the ‘60s folk group the Highwaymen and managed the Gaslight club, a hub of social protest.

Tim was too young to be aware of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez when they were regulars there, but in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s he saw performers ranging from folk musician Dave Van Ronk to comedian Richard Pryor combine trenchant commentary with entertainment.

“It was all around me,” he says. “It was walking down the street, not necessarily just from the music. There was a great spirit at that time in that area. People questioned, took nothing for granted, protesting.

“I remember days where I would have hockey practice and a protest,” he says, laughing as he holds his hands out and looks from one to the other. “I would have to decide which to go to.”

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Today, he and Sarandon, who live in New York with their three children, are perhaps show biz’s ranking activist couple. While that status has brought them a lot of derision (they’re frequent targets of Rush Limbaugh and other conservative commentators), it’s also proved rewarding.

“Bob Roberts,” in which he played a cynical, folk-singing political candidate (with songs he co-wrote with his brother David), satirized the rising young conservative tide and found a small but significant audience. “Dead Man Walking”--with its gripping performances by Sarandon and Sean Penn--was one of last year’s most acclaimed films.

“ ‘Bob Roberts’ had a lot of entertainment in it, a lot of songs, comedy, satire,” Robbins says. “But with ‘Dead Man Walking,’ the most important thing was not the political statements but the emotional journey. I think there’s definitely an appetite for that in America.

“The success of ‘Dead Man Walking’ is very encouraging to me. It shows that you can do a movie with substance and you don’t have to stand on a soap box to do it. It can get people to think, get people to feel and talk about the issues.”

The only problem is that many people now expect him always to be working a cause, even though the majority of his acting roles have been apolitical--from the pitching phenom in “Bull Durham” (the film that first brought him mainstream attention) to the reptilian studio head in Robert Altman’s “The Player,” from the smitten mechanic of “I.Q.” to the scheming prisoner of “The Shawshank Redemption.”

“It’s gotten so absurd,” he says. “Because I’ve spoken my mind and because I make a ‘Bob Roberts’ there’s this misperception. When I was on a press junket for ‘I.Q.,’ someone came in very seriously and asked me what the political message of the movie was. At that point I knew something was wrong.”

That might explain the sparkle in his eyes when he talks about his current project: co-starring with the ever-silly Martin Lawrence in the comedy “Nothing to Lose.”

“I love the idea of people going into a movie theater and just laughing,” he says. “I don’t think it all has to have a social importance.”

* “VH1 Honors” is Sunday at the Universal Amphitheatre, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City, 6 p.m. Sold out. (818) 980-9421. Airing live on VH1, with several repeats over the next two weeks.