James Spader

James Todd Spader was born on February 7, 1960, in Boston, Massachusetts, the youngest of three children. His parents, Jean and Stoddard Spader, were both teachers, and he grew up on the north shore near Andover, Massachusetts, as well as in Marion, Massachusetts, near Cape Cod. He has two older sisters, Libby and Annie. Spader attended several private schools, including The Pike School in Andover, where his mother taught art, and the Brooks School in North Andover, where his father was a faculty member. He later enrolled at Phillips Academy, where he befriended John F. Kennedy Jr., before dropping out at seventeen and relocating to New York City to pursue acting. To support himself during that period, he worked as a bartender, yoga instructor, meat truck driver, railroad car loader, and stable hand. He is a sixth-generation descendant of Connecticut politician Seth P. Beers, and Laurent Clerc, co-founder of the American School for the Deaf, is his third great-grandfather.

Spader made his first major film appearance in Endless Love in 1981 and took his first starring role in Tuff Turf in 1985. He appeared in The New Kids that same year, followed by Pretty in Pink in 1986, in which he played the wealthy, arrogant Steff. He co-starred in Mannequin and the adaptation of Less than Zero, both in 1987, the latter casting him as a drug dealer named Rip. Supporting work in Baby Boom and Wall Street also arrived in 1987. His career shifted significantly with Steven Soderbergh's Sex, Lies, and Videotape in 1989, in which he played a sexual voyeur whose arrival disrupts the lives of three Louisiana residents. The performance earned him the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival.

Through the early 1990s, Spader appeared opposite Susan Sarandon in the romantic drama White Palace, starred in the noir thriller Bad Influence, and played John Cusack's best friend in True Colors, all released between 1990 and 1991. He took the role of a poker-playing drifter in The Music of Chance in 1993 and starred as Egyptologist Daniel Jackson in the science fiction film Stargate in 1994. Supporting roles in Bob Roberts in 1992 and Wolf in 1994 followed. In 1996, he appeared in the controversial Canadian film Crash and played assassin Lee Woods in 2 Days in the Valley. He guest-starred in a 1997 episode of Seinfeld and appeared in The Watcher in 2000 before starring as a sadomasochistic employer in Secretary in 2002.

Spader's television career gained significant momentum when he joined the final season of The Practice in 2003 and 2004, portraying attorney Alan Shore. He reprised the role in the spin-off series Boston Legal, which ran from 2004 to 2008. His work as Shore earned him three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, winning in 2004 for The Practice and again in 2005 and 2007 for Boston Legal. The 2005 win made him one of a small number of actors to receive an Emmy for playing the same character across two different series. He also received the Satellite Award for Best Actor in a Series, Comedy or Musical for Boston Legal in 2006. In 2006, he narrated the first episode of Discovery Channel's documentary series Discovery Atlas. He guest-starred in the season seven finale of The Office in 2011 and subsequently joined the cast as a series regular for the eighth season, portraying Robert California. Beginning in 2013, he starred as Raymond Reddington in the NBC crime thriller The Blacklist, a role he held for ten seasons until the series finale on July 13, 2023. The role brought him two Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Actor in a Television Series Drama.

On Broadway, Spader appeared in Race, a play written and directed by David Mamet. The production opened on December 6, 2009, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and closed on August 21, 2010, after 297 performances. In film, he took supporting roles in Lincoln in 2012 and The Homesman in 2014, and voiced the villainous robot Ultron in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Avengers: Age of Ultron in 2015.

In his personal life, Spader met decorator Victoria Kheel in New York City in the 1980s. The two married in 1987 and had two sons together before Spader filed for divorce in 2004. He subsequently began a relationship with actress Leslie Stefanson, his co-star from the 2003 film Alien Hunter, and the two have one son together. In a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, Spader disclosed that he has obsessive-compulsive disorder.