94 Facts About James Woods

James Howard Woods was born on April 18,1947 and is an American actor.

James Woods started his career in minor roles on and off-Broadway before making his Broadway debut in The Penny Wars, followed by Borstal Boy, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine and Moonchildren.

James Woods starred in the NBC miniseries Holocaust opposite Meryl Streep.

James Woods rose to prominence portraying Gregory Powell in The Onion Field.

James Woods earned two Academy Awards nominations: one for Best Actor for his role as journalist Richard Boyle in Salvador and for Best Supporting Actor for playing white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith in Ghosts of Mississippi.

James Woods served as an executive producer on Christopher Nolan's biographical drama film Oppenheimer.

James Woods starred in the CBS legal series Shark, and had a recurring role in the Showtime crime series Ray Donovan.

James Woods has voiced roles for Hercules, Recess: School's Out, Stuart Little 2 and Surf's Up, as well as voicing himself once in The Simpsons, and several times in Family Guy.

James Woods was born on April 18,1947, in Vernal, Utah, and had a brother ten years younger.

James Woods's father, Gail Peyton Woods, was a United States Army intelligence officer who died in 1960 after routine surgery.

James Woods grew up in Warwick, Rhode Island, where he attended Pilgrim High School, from which he graduated in 1965.

James Woods is of part Irish descent and was raised Catholic, briefly serving as an altar boy.

James Woods stated on Inside the Actors Studio that he originally intended to become an eye surgeon.

James Woods pledged the Theta Delta Chi fraternity and was a member of the student theatre group Dramashop, acting in and directing a number of plays.

James Woods dropped out of MIT in 1969, one semester before graduating, to pursue an acting career.

James Woods has said that he owes his acting career to Tim Affleck, father of actors Ben and Casey Affleck.

The senior Affleck was a stage manager at the Theatre Company of Boston, which James Woods attended as a student.

James Woods appeared in 36 plays before making his Broadway debut in the 1969 play The Penny Wars.

James Woods got the part by pretending he was British.

James Woods returned to Broadway the following year to portray David Darst in Daniel Berrigan's The Trial of the Catonsville Nine at the Lyceum Theatre.

In 1971, he played Bob Rettie in the American premiere of Michael Weller's Moonchildren at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC The following year the production moved to Broadway at the Royale Theatre where James Woods starred alongside Edward Herrmann and Christopher Guest.

In 1972, James Woods won a Theatre World Award for his performance.

James Woods returned to Broadway in 1973 to portray Steven Cooper in the original production of Jean Kerr's Finishing Touches at the Plymouth Theatre.

James Woods has garnered a reputation as a prominent Hollywood character actor, having appeared in over 130 films and television series.

James Woods acted in the Robert Aldrich directed comedy-drama The Choirboys alongside Charles Durning, Louis Gossett Jr.

James Woods rose to prominence playing the husband of Meryl Streep in the critically acclaimed four episode miniseries Holocaust which aired on NBC.

James Woods is a standout as Greg Powell, the ringleader of the crooks, a horrible creature with a scarred face and a quicksilver personality that ranges from murderous to fatherly to murderous in a matter of seconds.

At the start of the 1980s, James Woods played an eccentric and unpredictable janitor in the Peter Yates directed thriller Eyewitness co-starring Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, Morgan Freeman and Christopher Plummer.

James Woods acted in the prison drama Fast-Walking with Variety giving the film a mixed review but praising him as "always interesting to watch".

James Woods took the starring role in the David Cronenberg written and directed science-fiction body horror film Videodrome.

Mr James Woods has been startling, but that kind of casting is almost a redundancy.

James Woods then took on the role of Maximillian "Max" Bercovicz, a Jewish gangster, in Sergio Leone's epic Once Upon a Time in America alongside Robert De Niro, Tuesday Weld, and Joe Pesci.

James Woods considers his role in the film as one of his favorites.

In Oliver Stone's drama Salvador, James Woods portrayed real-life journalist Richard Boyle as he chronicles events in El Salvador.

James Woods won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Actor.

James Woods received his first Academy Award nomination for his performance.

In 1987, James Woods won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for his role as a disabled man in the made-for-television film Promise.

In 1989, Woods won his second Primetime Emmy Award, for his role as the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill W in the made-for-television drama film, My Name Is Bill W starring James Garner and Gary Sinise.

In 1988, James Woods portrayed a man struggling with cocaine addiction in The Boost.

In 1989, James Woods acted in the courtroom drama True Believer with Robert Downey Jr.

James Woods is the best actor in Hollywood at playing manics, crazies, hyperactive schemers and intelligent con men, but here he simply plays a more or less normal husband with ordinary desires and passions.

James Woods was offered a leading role in Quentin Tarantino's directorial debut, the low-budget film Reservoir Dogs, but his agent rejected the script without showing it to the actor.

When James Woods learned of this some time later, he fired his agents, replacing them with ICM.

James Woods took a supporting role as attorney Joseph Scott in the Richard Attenborough directed biographical epic film Chaplin starring Robert Downey Jr.

James Woods played a supporting role of a hustler, Lester Diamond, in Martin Scorsese's Casino, alongside Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone and Joe Pesci.

James Woods received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination along with the rest of the cast for its ensemble work.

In Rob Reiner's film Ghosts of Mississippi, James Woods appeared alongside Alec Baldwin and Whoopi Goldberg.

James Woods portrayed Byron De La Beckwith, a white supremacist who assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963.

The Los Angeles Times published an article titled "James Woods is So Good at Being Bad".

Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised James Woods' performance remarking "James Woods shows off the full verve of an edgy Scarfe villain".

James Woods reprised the role of Hades again in the television series of the same name, as well as in House of Mouse, the Kingdom Hearts video game series, Disney Speedstorm, and Once Upon a Studio.

James Woods appeared in Sofia Coppola's directorial debut The Virgin Suicides alongside Kirsten Dunst, Josh Hartnett and Kathleen Turner.

James Woods appeared in the Denzel Washington thriller John Q and had a cameo in Be Cool, featuring an all-star cast.

In 2007, James Woods voiced the role of Reggie Belafonte, a short-tempered sea otter, in the Sony Pictures Animation film, Surf's Up.

From 2005 to 2016, James Woods has played a recurring role as himself in Seth MacFarlane's Family Guy.

James Woods has continued to voice Hades in the Kingdom Hearts video games.

From 2006 to 2008, James Woods starred in the CBS legal drama series Shark.

James Woods played an infamous defense lawyer who, after growing disillusioned when his client commits a murder, becomes a successful prosecutor with the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office.

In 2011, James Woods starred in the HBO television drama film Too Big to Fail based on the 2009 book of the same name by Andrew Ross Sorkin.

James Woods acted alongside Paul Giamatti, William Hurt, Cynthia Nixon, Tony Shalhoub and Bill Pullman.

Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly praised James Woods' writing that he "embodyed the role with macho aggression with snake-oil smoothness".

In 2012, James Woods appeared in the limited series Coma alongside Geena Davis, Richard Dreyfuss, and Ellen Burstyn.

In 2013, James Woods joined Showtime's critically acclaimed series Ray Donovan in a recurring role as Patrick "Sully" Sullivan starring Liev Schreiber, and Jon Voight.

James Woods appeared as a fictional version of himself in the episode of The Simpsons entitled "Homer and Apu" and in eight episodes of Family Guy, which is set in Woods' home state of Rhode Island.

James Woods is the namesake for James Woods Regional High School in Family Guy.

James Woods has lent his voice to video games such as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

In 2012, James Woods attended an anniversary screening of a restored cut of Once Upon a Time in America at the 65th Cannes Film Festival.

In 2014, James Woods joined Robert De Niro for an anniversary screening of Once Upon a Time in America at the 52nd New York Film Festival at Film Society at Lincoln Center.

In 2017, James Woods made a rare public appearance at the Writers Guild of America Awards to honor his friend Oliver Stone, with whom he had collaborated three times, who was receiving the lifetime achievement award.

James Woods served as an executive producer on Christopher Nolan's biographical thriller Oppenheimer.

In 1992, James Woods dated Heather Graham, his co-star in the film Diggstown.

James Woods was raised as Roman Catholic and considers himself a practicing follower of the religion.

James Woods swerved his Jeep Grand Cherokee to avoid the accident and collided with a retaining wall, but slid backwards into a guard rail 100 feet above the Colorado River.

James Woods is a dealer of antiques in Rhode Island.

James Woods is an avid poker player, playing in cash games and many tournaments.

James Woods played in the WPT's Hollywood Home Game series in 2004 for the American Stroke Association charity.

In 1988, James Woods sued actress Sean Young for $2 million, accusing her of stalking him after they appeared together in the film The Boost.

Young later countered that James Woods had overreacted when she had spurned his on-set advances.

James Woods sued Kent Hospital in Warwick, Rhode Island, alleging negligence.

In July 2015, James Woods sued an anonymous Twitter user known as Abe List, and ten other Twitter users, for $10 million over an allegedly libelous tweet accusing him of being a "cocaine addict".

In 2017, shortly before the Abe List litigation was resolved, Portia Boulger sued James Woods for misidentifying her as a Nazi in an allegedly libelous tweet.

James Woods has defended US President Donald Trump in the media, and has been described as a "staunch Trump supporter".

James Woods' name was in an advertisement in the Los Angeles Times that condemned Hamas and Hezbollah and supported Israel in the 2006 Lebanon War.

James Woods stated that the agency dropped him due to his political views.

James Woods has frequently expressed his conservative political views on Twitter and has been locked out of his account multiple times for violations of the platform's terms of service.

In 2018, James Woods turned his Twitter feed into a bulletin board for missing California wildfires' evacuees, and was credited with saving lives and helping to reunite missing loved ones and pets with their families.

James Woods provided aid to actresses Holly Marie Combs and Alyssa Milano, with the latter thanking him for his help saving her horses.

In 2022, analysis conducted by researchers with the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public and the Krebs Stamos Group found James Woods was the top purveyor of election misinformation on Twitter during the late months of 2020.

That same year, James Woods announced his intentions to sue the Democratic National Committee following Elon Musk's release of the Twitter Files.

Critics of James Woods defended Twitter's decision by pointing out that he posted images of Hunter Biden's genitals to his account.

James Woods has condemned 2024 pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses for fomenting anti-semitism and showing support for Hamas.

James Woods reported his suspicions to the co-pilot in flight, and he claimed that those concerns were passed on to the FAA.

James Woods has confirmed that he looked at pictures of the hijackers and identified two terrorists as being among the men that he had seen on his flight.

James Woods received three Screen Actors Guild Award nominations and three Independent Spirit Award nominations winning for Salvador.