James Woods Biography Quotes 14 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
James Woods was born on April 18, 1947, in Vernal, Utah, and grew up largely in Rhode Island. His father served in the U.S. Army intelligence community and died when James was a teenager, a loss that shaped a driven, self-reliant temperament. Woods excelled academically and won a place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied before deciding to pursue acting full time. He immersed himself in campus theater and then in the rigorous world of professional stage work, choosing craft and risk over a conventional academic path.

Stage Beginnings
Woods cut his teeth in East Coast theater, where the discipline of rehearsal rooms and the immediacy of live audiences sharpened a style that would become his signature: quicksilver intelligence, a ferocious work ethic, and an ability to channel volatility into precision. He earned attention Off-Broadway and on Broadway in the early 1970s, building relationships with directors and ensembles that valued his intensity and verbal agility. The stage taught him to think fast, listen hard, and play complicated men without softening their edges.

Film Breakthrough and 1980s
His screen breakthrough arrived with The Onion Field (1979), a harrowing crime drama that announced him as a formidable character actor. The 1980s became a defining decade. In David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983), Woods collaborated with a director who prized psychological daring; the role fused technology, paranoia, and charisma in ways that made him unforgettable. Sergio Leone cast him in Once Upon a Time in America (1984) alongside Robert De Niro and Elizabeth McGovern, where Woods' portrayal of Max added menace and tragic ambition to the epic's emotional core. He reached a new level with Oliver Stone's Salvador (1986), a blistering portrait of war correspondent Richard Boyle, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and cementing a productive relationship with Stone. Throughout the decade, he moved easily between independent-spirited projects and mainstream thrillers, working with collaborators who appreciated his appetite for moral ambiguity.

1990s: Recognition and Range
The 1990s showcased his range across prestige dramas and popular cinema. Martin Scorsese cast him in Casino (1995) with Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, and Joe Pesci, where Woods gave a memorable turn as a small-time hustler whose charm curdles under pressure. In Oliver Stone's Nixon (1995), opposite Anthony Hopkins, he brought chilly focus to the inner circles of power. Ghosts of Mississippi (1996) earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his searing portrayal within Rob Reiner's civil rights courtroom drama. He also appeared in Robert Zemeckis' Contact (1997) with Jodie Foster, channeling bureaucratic calculation into a performance that anchored the film's political dimension. He balanced these with character-driven parts, including a nuanced performance in Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides (1999) alongside Kathleen Turner.

Television and Voice Work
Parallel to his film career, Woods distinguished himself on television. He earned widespread acclaim for the television movie Promise (1986), produced by and co-starring James Garner, and for My Name Is Bill W. (1989), a portrait of Alcoholics Anonymous cofounder Bill Wilson, again working closely with Garner. These projects brought him two Primetime Emmy Awards and Golden Globes recognition, confirming his stature as a leading actor equally at home in intimate, character-focused stories. Later, he headlined the legal drama Shark (2006, 2008), portraying a brilliant, combative prosecutor whose methods tested the boundaries of the system.

Woods also became a lasting presence in animation and interactive media. His voice performance as Hades in Disney's Hercules (1997) turned the villain into a sardonic, fast-talking icon; he reprised the role across television and video games, including the Kingdom Hearts series, bringing his trademark wit to new generations of audiences.

Personal Life and Advocacy
Family remained a quiet anchor amid a demanding career. The death of his brother Michael in 2006, following a medical emergency in Rhode Island, profoundly affected him. Woods pursued a wrongful-death case that concluded with a settlement and spurred the creation of a patient-safety initiative at the hospital named in his brother's honor. The effort reflected a persistent pattern in his life: channeling grief into work with concrete outcomes. He has also been candid and forceful in public discourse, bringing the same sharpness that defined his roles to civic debates, though his primary legacy remains rooted in performance.

Craft, Method, and Collaborators
Directors and co-stars routinely cited Woods' preparation and speed of thought. Cronenberg leveraged his appetite for risk; Leone drew out a blend of charm and ruthlessness; Scorsese used his coiled energy to complicate the moral texture of Casino; Oliver Stone relied on his intellectual edge for muscular political drama. With scene partners like Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Elizabeth McGovern, Deborah Harry, James Belushi, Kathleen Turner, and James Garner, he met intensity with intensity, elevating the material through friction and surprise. Casting directors turned to him when a story needed moral complexity, verbal velocity, or the glint of danger.

Legacy and Influence
Across decades, James Woods assembled one of American cinema's most distinctive galleries of antiheroes, hustlers, crusaders, and bureaucrats. He navigated the line between leading man and character actor with unusual freedom, thriving under auteurs who valued nerve and intelligence. His performances in Salvador, Videodrome, Once Upon a Time in America, Casino, Ghosts of Mississippi, Contact, and The Virgin Suicides, together with celebrated television work in Promise and My Name Is Bill W., form a body of work that is both varied and thematically cohesive. It reveals an artist drawn to pressure points in American life: ambition and betrayal, power and responsibility, technology and identity. Whether sparring with De Niro, matching wits with Jodie Foster, or trading barbs as a Disney villain, Woods left indelible marks on every medium he entered, building a career defined by audacity, control, and the collaborators who helped him test the limits of what a performance can do.

Our collection contains 14 quotes who is written by James, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Ethics & Morality - Victory - Sarcastic - Movie.

Other people realated to James: Jeri Ryan (Actress), Michael Ritchie (Director), Ron Livingston (Actor), Vincent Kartheiser (Actor)