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 damn actor possible. 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).
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.
Woods and 9/11
On a flight to Los Angeles several weeks before the September 11, 2001 attacks, Woods grew suspicious of four of his fellow-passengers: well-dressed men who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent. Throughout the flight, the men stared straight ahead, did not speak with one another except in low, hushed tones, and did not eat or sleep. Woods became so convinced that the men were "casing" the plane that he kept his cutlery after lunch and shared his suspicions with a flight attendant. "I said, 'I think this plane is going to be hijacked.' I told her, 'I know how serious it is to say this,' and asked to speak to the captain." The first officer promptly assured Woods that the cockpit door would be kept locked and the plane landed safely.
On the evening of September 11th, Woods told the FBI in Los Angeles about the encounter. At six-forty-five the next morning he was roused by a telephone call from an FBI agent. "I said, 'I'll get ready and I'll come down to the federal building,'" Woods recalled. "He said, 'That's O.K. We're outside your house.'" When he was shown photographs, Woods thought he recognized two of the hijackers - Hamza Alghamdi, who was on United Airlines Flight 175 (which struck the south tower of the World Trade Center) and Khalid Almihdhar, who was on American Airlines Flight 77 (which struck The Pentagon).
According to writer Annie Jacobsen, FBI agents told her in a private conversation that Mohammed Atta, who was the unofficial leader of the 9/11 hijackers, was in fact on the flight with Woods.
Politics
Woods is 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.
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