James Spader is an American actor. He has appeared in various popular movies and TV shows in critically acclaimed roles. His best known movies include "sex, lies and videotape", "Stargate", and "Secretary". He is also well known for his ongoing character of Alan Shore in the TV series "The Practice" and "Boston Public".
James Spader was born in Boston, Massachusetts in the year 1960. His birthday is the seventh of February. Attending high school at Phillips Academy north of Boston, James Spader dropped out of school his junior year to become an actor. He had to work various menial jobs for several years, including shoveling manure and bussing tables, before finding his first acting roles in the early eighties.
For his first decade of acting, James Spader appeared in mostly small roles, and the majority of his films were not hits. His first five years he was in many made for TV movies such as "Starcrossed", "Family Secrets", "A Killer in the Family", "Diner" and "Cocaine: One Man's Seduction". During the late eighties he was in films like "Pretty in Pink", "The New Kids", "Less Than Zero", "Baby Boom" and "Jack's Back". "Wall Street" was a particularly popular film from this period, although James Spader didn't have a very large role. In "Pretty in Pink", James Spader started to develop his yuppie persona, which has become one of his stock characters.
In 1989, James Spader had a major role in "sex, lies, and videotape". This film launched director Stephen Soderbergh's career and also the independent film movement of the early nineties. While most of James Spader's parts during the nineties continued to be fairly obscure, he had a high profile starring role as a scientist sent to a planet populated by ancient Egyptians and aliens in the 1994 science fiction hit "Stargate".
As of early 2007 James Spader continues to appear in films. He is best known currently, however, for playing the part of Alan Shore in "The Practice" and "Boston Legal", which he has done in over eighty episodes combined since 2003.