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James Woods

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James Woods

James Howard Woods (born April 18, 1947) is an Oscar-nominated American actor.

Early life

Woods was born in Vernal, Utah to Gail Peyton Woods, an army intelligence officer who died in 1960 following routine surgery, and Martha Dixon, who operated a pre-school after her husband's death; he has a brother, Michael. Woods, who was raised in his Irish American mother's Catholic religion, grew up in Warwick, Rhode Island, where he attended Pilgrim High School. Woods had been accepted to attend the United States Air Force Academy with the intention of becoming a fighter pilot. Unfortunately, several weeks before he was to depart, Woods suffered an accident involving falling through a plate glass window -- which injured his hand tendons severely enough to result in his acceptance to the Academy being retracted.

Thus Woods chose to pursue his undergraduate studies at MIT where he majored in political science (though he originally planned on a career as a surgeon), but dropped out in 1969, just before his graduation, in order to pursue a career in acting. Woods headed to New York City when he called his mother and told her the truth.

While his mother wasn't thrilled at the prospect of her son pursuing a career as an actor, she blessed him to follow his dream. At the 2006 CBS UpFront James Woods told the audience that his mother told him that if he was going to switch careers to acting that he be the best actor he could possibly be. Before this transition to acting, however, he was considered a brilliant student and was permitted to enroll in a linear algebra course at UCLA while still in high school, having scored a perfect 800 on the verbal portion of the SAT and a 779 on the math portion. James has an IQ of 180, which he scored in the Stanford-Binet IQ test.

Career

His career has been noted for the intense characters he has chosen. He was nominated for an Academy Award twice: the first in 1987 for Best Actor in Salvador and again in 1996 for Best Supporting Actor for Ghosts of Mississippi. He has also garnered critical praise for his voice work for Hades in Disney's Hercules and in the Kingdom Hearts video game series. His personal favorite of all of his roles, however, is as the domineering gangster Max in Sergio Leone's gangster epic Once Upon A Time In America (1984).

He was briefly considered for the role of The Joker by Tim Burton and Sam Hamm for the Batman film in 1989. Hamm recalls that he and Burton thought, "James Woods would be good and wouldn't need any makeup, which would save a couple of hours' work every morning." The role ended up going to Jack Nicholson [1]

Woods appeared as himself in the episode of The Simpsons entitled "Homer and Apu" and in an episode of Family Guy entitled "Peter's Got Woods." In 2006, Woods starred opposite Cuba Gooding Jr. in the intense political thriller End Game. Also in 2006, Woods played himself in the season 3 premiere episode of Entourage.

Woods will star in the new CBS legal drama Shark. Woods will play a famous Los Angeles lawyer who becomes a prosecutor. Shark is directed by Spike Lee and also stars Jeri Ryan.

Politics

Woods has been a vocal supporter of U.S. President George W. Bush and former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani. Woods lobbied hard to play Giuliani in the biopic Rudy!: The Rudy Giuliani Story and considers the role one of the favorites of his career. He is, however, on most political issues to the left of the Republican Party and is probably best described as a modern War Democrat, a la Ron Silver

Selected filmography

Trivia

  • On the animated sitcom Family Guy, the high school of the fictional town of Quahog, Rhode Island is named James Woods High School in tribute to Woods. The town also features a forest called the James Woods. Woods voiced himself in the 2005 episode "Peter's Got Woods", as well as several minor characters in the series' fifth season. All of this is most likely due to the fact that James Woods is actually from Rhode Island. During the commentary for this episode Woods jokingly calls his performance a "career ender," due to its crazy content.
  • Recently, Woods has shared an endorsement for the online poker website Hollywood Poker with poker enthusiast Vince Van Patten. James can be found playing regularly at Hollywood Poker, and contributes content to the website.
  • Woods' endorsement of Phil Gordon's Little Green Book, an instructional poker text, appears on the back of the book jacket.
  • Quentin Tarantino wrote a part in Reservoir Dogs (purportedly Mr. Orange, Tarantino won't confirm or deny) with Woods in mind, but his agent rejected the script without showing it to the actor. When Woods learned of this some time later, he fired the agent.
  • During the filming of The Boost, Woods became romantically involved with co-star Sean Young. After Woods broke off the relationship, he became victim of a number of assaults by Young.
  • Disney animators studied Woods' appearance in most of his movies over and over again to perfect the look of his voice character in Hercules, Hades, especially his face, which is striking in similarities. They also featured him in the 2001 movie, Recess: School's Out as Dr. Philium Benedict.
  • Woods received a score of 1580 on the SAT, which included a perfect score on the verbal section of the test. (Note: test was taken under the "old" scoring methods, which was only out of 1600, and before revisions to the scoring system, which made higher scores more likely)
  • Very close to his family, Woods makes frequent trips back to his native Rhode Island to visit.
  • Woods plays on the World Poker Tour in the Hollywood Home games for the American Stroke Association charity. In 2006, James finished in 24th place out of 692 at the L.A. Poker Classic for $40,000
  • During a press interview for Kingdom Hearts II, Woods admitted that he is an avid video game player.
  • His brother and fellow actor, Michael Woods, passed away on July, 26th 2006. This occured shortly after the two of them returned after James winning 24th place at the World Poker Tour.
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