James Howard Woods (born April 18, 1947) is an American actor. He is known for fast-talking intense roles on stage and screen. He received various accolades including three Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, three Screen Actors Guild Awards as well as nominations for two Academy Awards. He started his career in minor roles on and off-Broadway. He made his Broadway debut in The Penny Wars (1969). He returned to Broadway in Borstal Boy (1970), The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1971), Moonchildren (1972), and Finishing Touches (1973). He made his television breakthrough alongside Meryl Streep, playing her husband in the acclaimed NBC miniseries Holocaust (1978).
Woods early film roles include in The Visitors (1972), The Way We Were (1973) and Night Moves (1975). He rose to prominence portraying Gregory Powell in The Onion Field (1979). He earned two Academy Awards nominations: one for Best Actor for Salvador (1986) and for Best Supporting Actor for Ghosts of Mississippi (1996). Notable film roles include in Videodrome (1983), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Nixon (1995), Chaplin (1992), Casino (1995), Contact (1997), Vampires (1998), Any Given Sunday (1999), and The Virgin Suicides (1999).
He is the recipient of two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for his roles as D.J. in the CBS movie Promise (1987) and Bill W. in the ABC film My Name Is Bill W. (1989). He has also portrayed Roy Cohn in Citizen Cohn (1992) and Dick Fuld in Too Big to Fail (2011). He starred in CBS legal series Shark (2006-2008), and had a recurring role in the Showtime crime series Ray Donovan (2013). He has voiced roles for Hercules (1997), Recess: School's Out (2001), Stuart Little 2 (2002), and Surf's Up (2007).
Early life and education
Woods was born on April 18, 1947, in Vernal, Utah, and had a brother ten years younger. His father, Gail Peyton Woods, was an army intelligence officer who died in 1960 after routine surgery. His mother, Martha A. (née Smith), ran a pre-school after her husband's death and later married Thomas E. Dixon. Woods grew up in Warwick, Rhode Island, where he attended Pilgrim High School, from which he graduated in 1965. He is of part Irish descent and was raised Catholic, briefly serving as an altar boy.
Woods was an undergraduate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He stated on Inside the Actors Studio that he originally intended to become an eye surgeon. He pledged the Theta Delta Chi fraternity and was a member of the student theatre group Dramashop, acting in and directing a number of plays. He dropped out of MIT in 1969, one semester before graduating, to pursue an acting career.
Woods has said that he owes his acting career to Tim Affleck, father of actors Ben and Casey Affleck, who was a stage manager at the Theatre Company of Boston, which Woods attended as a student.
