James Spader

James Todd Spader is an American actor widely recognized for portraying eccentric and morally complex characters. Over his career, his work has earned him three Primetime Emmy Awards, a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor, and multiple nominations for both Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Spader was born on February 7, 1960, in Boston, Massachusetts, as the youngest of three children born to teachers Jean and Stoddard Greenwood Spader. Raised in Massachusetts within a progressive environment, he attended private institutions including The Pike School and the Brooks School. At seventeen, he dropped out of Phillips Academy and moved to New York City to pursue acting, supporting himself through odd jobs such as teaching yoga, bartending, driving a meat truck, and working as a stable boy.

He made his major film debut in Endless Love in 1981 before taking his first starring role in Tuff Turf in 1985. Spader gained wider prominence playing affluent, arrogant characters in films like Pretty in Pink, Less than Zero, and Wall Street. His critical breakthrough came with the 1989 drama Sex, Lies, and Videotape, where his performance earned him the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Spader appeared in a diverse range of film projects. His credits include the romantic drama White Palace, the sci-fi adventure Stargate, the drama Crash, 2 Days in the Valley, and Secretary. He later took supporting roles in features such as Lincoln and provided the physical and vocal performance for the villainous title character in Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Spader achieved widespread acclaim on television as attorney Alan Shore, a role he introduced in The Practice and continued in its spin-off Boston Legal, winning three Primetime Emmy Awards for his performance. He later joined the cast of the sitcom The Office as Robert California and subsequently starred as fugitive Raymond Reddington in the crime drama The Blacklist from 2013 to 2023, earning two Golden Globe nominations.

In addition to film and television, Spader performed on Broadway in David Mamet's play Race and worked as a documentary narrator and commercial voice actor. In his personal life, Spader married Victoria Kheel in 1987, with whom he has two sons, before divorcing in 2004. He later began a relationship with Leslie Stefanson, with whom he shares a third son. Spader has disclosed that he lives with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and he is slated to reprise his role as Ultron in the series VisionQuest.