20 Questions: James Woods

James Woods has made a career of playing some of the more offbeat characters in recent films. He was the sociopathic killer in "The Onion Field," the doomed German-Jewish artist in "Holocaust," the freaked-out Vietnam veteran in "Eyewitness" and will be the cult deprogrammer in the forthcoming "Captured." Some critics say Woods, 34, is the new De Niro, the new Pacino--an intense actor capable of playing an enormous variety of roles, each one of them different, each one complete. To find out more about him, we sent out interviewer Claudia Dreifus. "Jimmy Woods is fast-talking, glib and smart," Dreifus reports. "He's one man Who is really clear on Who he is and what he does."

1.

[Q] Playboy: In most of your films, you've played either a victim, a sociopath or a loser. Does being typed in this way bother you?

[A] Woods: No. Has the man in the gray flannel suit ever interested anybody? There aren't very many interesting straight-down-the-line sort of people. Robert Redford is about the only one who's been able to capitalize on being Mr. Straight. But he's a much underrated actor; he does much more interesting things than he's given credit for. Look at Ordinary People. His characters are the most disoriented bunch of people I've ever seen. When I began trying to get into movies and television, I used to bitch and moan that conventionally good-looking guys had everything going for them. If we all went for a Rockford Files part, one of them would most likely get it because he looked like Robert Wagner and I didn't. But some of these guys who got the parts and who were also my friends would say to me, "Jim-my, eventually you'll end up getting the De Niro parts and we never will." They knew that it wouldn't be very interesting to watch an Arrow-shirt man in Raging Bull.

2.

[Q] Playboy: Of all the sociopaths and misfits you've played, which one taught you the most?

[A] Woods: The cop killer I played in The Onion Field. I was really horrified to find out he had no sense of right or wrong.When I first began the movie, I thought, I'll find some way to make this guy real sensitive and have him exonerate himself in a grander human or spiritual or moral universe. That way, he'll turn out not to have been such a horrible human being. When we finished shooting, what I had done felt very cold and disgusting, and I realized that there is a kind of person who is truly sociopathic. I had to come to grips with that; to find out what it's like not to think about whether other people lived or died--so long as they served my purposes. It's quite chilling to know that I could--that we all could, under the right circumstances--operate on that level.

3.

[Q] Playboy: Isn't there always a sense of the outlaw in your work?

[A] Woods: Maybe there's something to that. Nietzsche had a theory that the law was invented by the weak to keep the strong at bay. I'd like to amend that a bit. I think that maybe the outlaw was invented by the slightly more sensitive people to keep the weight of the so-called Beautiful People at bay long enough to keep themselves breathing in their own world. I've always felt that outcasts have a certain purity that other people don't. Outcasts don't have to live up to any standards--they define their own.

4.

[Q] Playboy: You played Karl Weiss, the neurotic and doomed artist in Holocaust. How would you feel if you were hit by a truck tomorrow and Holocaust were the thing that you were most remembered for?

[A] Woods: I feel OK about Holocaust. But I wouldn't want it to be the epitaph on my tombstone. While we were shooting it, Meryl Streep and I concluded that we were committing the second greatest crime of the 20th Century: We were convinced we would probably all go to hell for doing this piece of shit and besmirching the memory of millions of victims of the Holocaust. As it turned out, we were unfair to the program and to ourselves; that series meant a lot to people. I felt good about what I did. I liked showing a supposedly weak man who, in fact, was just a sensitive man--and who fought back in his own way and who was willing to give his life for what he believed in. I like to show people who go beyond their capabilities and become heroic in some small way. I want everybody who sits in the audience to think: You know, at one point in my life, I'll do some small gesture like that and it will make me just a little bit better than I thought I was.

5.

[Q] Playboy: What qualities do you think producers see in you?

[A] Woods: Producers don't see anything in me. Producers hate me, OK? Producers are assholes. How's that for a quote? They're schmucks; they're deal makers. They know all the tricks of the trade but they don't know the trade itself. Producers know how to steal money and they know how to put together packages. So what relevance would someone like me have in their lives? They don't give a shit about the kind of thing that I do. My only stock in trade--my one strong suit, in all objective modesty--is that I feel I'm one of the most talented people of my generation in film. I may not be the most charismatic. I may not be the most successful. I'm not a pretty boy. When they want one of those, they call Richard Gere. But if the role requires that the actor be great or it's going to be a disastrous picture, they call me. As for most producers, they're liars and thieves. They have no value in life. They don't believe in anything.

6.

[Q] Playboy: As an actor, who's your competition? Do you think you're up there with guys like Robert De Niro?

[A] Woods: From a business point of view, I've lost parts to John Hurt and Treat Williams and others. I would like to hear my name and De Niro's mentioned in the same sentence more often than not. Whether, in fact, that becomes true will depend on the future. But if I don't end up deserving that honor in the eyes of the world, tough shit for the eyes of the world, because that's where I think I belong.

7.

[Q] Playboy: A lot of people thought you'd get an Oscar for your performance in The Onion Field, but you weren't even nominated. Why not, do you suppose?

[A] Woods: I don't seem to get awards. The year before The Onion Field, I was in Holocaust. Everyone said I would get an Emmy for that. There were 16 Emmy nominations for Holocaust. All the principals--except me. But the day I didn't get nominated for Onion Field was also the day I really fell in love with Katherine Greko, who later became my wife--so it didn't matter. Who gives a fuck about the Academy Award?

I mean, who's in the Academy anyway? The Joey Bishops of this world. The Academy is not made up of people who go to see The Onion Field. It's made up of people who watch The Dinah Shore Show. It would have pissed me off if Coppola and those guys were making the decision. But if the Swifty Lazars or whoever else is a member of the Academy doesn't think I deserve an award, well, I think it's something like a tone-deaf schmuck's telling Jascha Hei-fetz, "You know, I don't really like your music too much."

8.

[Q] Playboy: But deep down, wouldn't you really like to win an Oscar?

[A] Woods: Sure. Of course I want it. Do you know what it does for your salary when you win an Academy Award? It quadruples it. And I want them to pay me a lot of money. I want to bleed them where they live.

9.

[Q] Playboy: And what would you do with really big money once you were making it?

[A] Woods: I don't know; I don't have that much need for money. With the money I made from my last picture, I bought my mother a condominium. If I got too much more, I'd probably just buy a lot of drugs and stop doing interviews and just settle down and destroy myself. The point is this: Why should I let the producers of this world drive around in a Rolls-Royce, and not me?

10.

[Q] Playboy: What makes you merit that Rolls so much more than they?

[A] Woods: It's not me that counts. What's important is what the artist contributes to the film. Me, I can stand on a street corner and entertain and people will throw coins. Producers can make deals. Period. Anybody can do what they do. But not everybody can create a vision of humanity, in an offbeat way, that will enlighten people's souls. An actor, at his best, does that.

11.

[Q] Playboy: When you were a kid growing up in Rhode Island, did you think you were good-looking?

[A] Woods: No. What was considered good-looking in those days were all those fucking little walking surfboards and Barbie dolls. By those standards, I felt hideously ugly. It didn't threaten me, though. I thought, Well, I'm real intelligent. I have wit. I have some standards I believe in. I never said, "I'm not good-looking. Therefore, I am a loser." Now I must say, in all honesty, I did envy the guys who looked more like the ideal. I thought, Boy, those guys have it great. Those guys never have a problem. If they have a pimple, it's always under their arm or somewhere like that.

12.

[Q] Playboy: So how did you become an actor? In those days, only guys who looked like Tab Hunter thought of becoming actors.

[A] Woods: Becoming an actor was the one fantasy I never had as a kid. Basically, I wondered if someday I was going to go off and become a senior vice-president at Union Carbide and have an extra car in the garage. And I did go that route for a while. I went to MIT on full scholarship. My father, who died when I was 12, had always wanted me to go to MIT. He'd wanted to go there himself. But he couldn't--so it was his dream for me to go. My dad was in the Service. He had a rough life. He wanted something better for me.

13.

[Q] Playboy: Then how did acting come to you, if you were going to go off and become a corporation man?

[A] Woods: It came out of the clear blue. A friend of mine asked me to help out in a high school play for a drama competition and, in fact, I won an award for my work in that piece. Later, at MIT, I went to the Dramashop a lot. I liked acting. Besides, the Dramashop was the only place at MIT where there was any pussy. MIT had very few women and all of them made Golda Meir look like Marilyn Monroe. The Dramashop was the one little oasis in the middle of a completely cock-ridden desert.

14.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you quit MIT in your senior year?

[A] Woods: I was majoring in political science during the war in Vietnam. Many of my professors had research and consulting contracts with the Defense Department. Around school, you'd hear a lot of talk about "war being an extension of diplomacy." I was high on the dean's list, but everything bothered me. I didn't want to graduate and go to work for the fucking State Department or the CIA to do graphics on how to promote more megadeaths in Vietnam. So I talked with a friend. Tom Cole, and I said to him, "My lather always wanted me to graduate from MIT, but I think I want to quit." And he said, "If I could be your surrogate father for a moment, I would tell you, for him, that it's all right. I'm sure he'd be happy if you did what you really want to do with your life." Then I called my mother and asked her, "Does this break your heart?" She said, "I think you should do what you want to do and I'll help you in any way I can." Ten years later, she told me that she almost died inside, but she never let me know.

15.

[Q] Playboy: Who are your heroes?

[A] Woods: Joe Wambaugh. He has real integrity. Also, I admired John Lennon. I don't think that man ever did anything he really didn't want to do, and that impresses me. I read his Playboy Interview and a lot of it was not my cup of tea, but I loved that he didn't apologize for anything. He seemed like a man who had a lot of hard times and no regrets.

My mother is one of the most heroic people I know. She grew up on welfare. But she started a private school for children in Providence. The school could have made a profit, but instead, she gave away 20 percent of the places to poor kids, black kids. Once, her accountant asked her why she did it, and she said: "Because one day, I saw a bus go by and it said, Project Head Start, and I thought, Why should those kids be stigmatized like that? So I followed that bus to where the kids lived and when they got off, I asked their parents, 'Would you like to send your children to a private school?' " My mother remembered what it was like to be the poorest kid in town and to feel bad because of it.

16.

[Q] Playboy: What do you like most about women?

[A] Woods: Well, I used to be accused by my old girlfriend of hating women. But, then, she hated me. I hate what women let society make them become. I hate people who think honor is a kid's game--and I think a lot of women have been taught, "All's fair in love and war." I love strong women. I love women who don't take shit. My wife is like that. Me, I'm a great manipulator, but I didn't realize it until I met her and she pointed it out. She just won't let me manipulate her.

17.

[Q] Playboy: Is your marriage monogamous?

[A] Woods: Yeah. And it's no problem. Nobody excites me as much as Katherine does. No one ever will. A lot of guys think that when they have a problem with their marriage, the answer is to go out and fuck some bimbo. When Kathy and I have a fight about something, I'll call up one of my male friends and maybe we'll fly to Vegas for a day of gambling. Sticking my dick into some random woman is not going to solve whatever problem I'm having with Kathy. We've put mechanical sex high up on the altar of 20th Century America and it isn't very interesting.

18.

[Q] Playboy: Now that you've hit it big in movies, do lots of women come on to you?

[A] Woods: Actually, nobody hits on me since I've gotten married. A friend of mine said that's because ever since I met Kathy, I haven't been giving off the scent. And I'm not catching it, either. Which is fine with me. I wasn't all that happy with what was called the sexual revolution. When I was single and living out in Malibu, I went through a phase when fucking different women all the time seemed like a good way of getting a quick fix on feeling intimate and not alone. One day, I woke up and wanted more in life. When Kathy and I first got serious, we'd walk up the streets of Beverly Hills and we'd see all these chippies lacquered up for the kill. Being with someone I truly loved and was committed to, I thought, Man, I wasn't trying to get them. They were trying to get me. And I let them have me too easily.

19.

[Q] Playboy: When you were single, did you have an easy time with women?

[A] Woods: Nothing was easy. Nothing. But I was smart enough to know that if a girl didn't look at me twice before my last picture came out and three weeks later she had a lip lock on my zipper, this had nothing to do with me as a person.

20.

[Q] Playboy: You grew up Catholic. What effect did that have on you?

[A] Woods: I wasn't forced to go to church or anything, but I did go. And I learned a lot from it. Nothing ever made sex as good as the Catholic Church did. When you're Catholic, it's literally a sin to think about eating a little pussy or something like that. So you might as well go out and eat it if you're going to go to hell for thinking about it. You think, Well, I can't help thinking about it, so fuck it. I'm going straight to hell and I might as well go out there and lick that chick and call it a day.