James Spader

James Todd Spader was born on February 7, 1960, in Boston, Massachusetts. His parents, Jean and Stoddard Greenwood Spader, were both teachers. He attended Phillips Academy in Andover but left in the eleventh grade to pursue an acting career in New York City. Before achieving success, Spader held various jobs, including bussing tables, shoveling manure, and teaching yoga. His early career saw him in youth-oriented films such as “Tuff Turf” (1985), “Pretty in Pink” (1986), and “Mannequin” (1987), often cast in roles as unsympathetic characters.

Spader’s breakthrough came with the 1989 Steven Soderbergh drama “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” for which he won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival. This performance opened doors to more diverse and significant roles, including in films like “White Palace” (1990), “Stargate” (1994) as Dr. Daniel Jackson, and “Secretary” (2002). He gained widespread recognition for his role as the colorful attorney Alan Shore, first in the final season of David E. Kelley’s “The Practice” (2003–2004) and then as the lead in its spin-off, “Boston Legal” (2004–2008).

His portrayal of Alan Shore earned him three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (2004, 2005, 2007), making him one of the few actors to win an Emmy for the same character across two different series. Later, Spader joined the cast of the sitcom “The Office” (2011–2012) as Robert California, and subsequently starred as Raymond ‘Red’ Reddington in the NBC crime thriller series “The Blacklist” (2013–2023), also serving as an executive producer for 196 episodes. In 2015, he lent his voice and motion-capture performance to the villainous Ultron in Marvel’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron” and is set to reprise the role in the upcoming Disney+ series “Vision Quest” (2026).