Playboy Interview: James Spader

It's only fitting that one of the quirkiest shows on television, Boston Legal, stars James Spader, one of the quirkiest actors in show business. Created by David E. Kelley--the man behind The Practice, Picket Fences, Ally McBeal and other offbeat shows--Boston Legal confounds audiences, who can never be quite sure if they're watching a drama or a comedy. And with Spader playing lead character Alan Shore, there's even more confusion: Is Shore a hero, a smarmy jerk, a con artist or a sentimentalist?

Critics aren't confused. They love the show's inventive plotlines, ethical brainteasers, clever dialogue and unpredictable characters. The program has been a top 25 hit with viewers, but it lingers in the shadow of the ABC show that airs before it--Desperate Housewives, the second most watched drama on TV. Even if it's not as popular as the women of Wisteria Lane, Boston Legal is, as Newsday says, "very nearly irresistible--the perfect complement to Desperate Housewives." The Washington Post adds, "The principal reason the show sparks and sizzles is Spader."

Spader, 45, is a relative newcomer to series TV, better known for his work in eccentric independent movies. Many of these have featured overt and often obsessive sex, beginning with Sex, Lies and Videotape, which won him the best actor award at Cannes in 1989.

Spader has always pushed boundaries. In Secretary he plays a lawyer who has a sadomasochistic relationship with Maggie Gyllenhaal. In Crash, directed by David Cronenberg, his character and one played by Holly Hunter survive an automobile accident that awakens bizarre erotic emotions in both of them. The movie follows their exploration of other accident scenes as they go deeper and deeper into the bizarre world that connects eroticism and car crashes.

Spader has also played bad boys, yuppie scum, sympathetic deviants, a doctor, a gambler, a killer and an archaeologist in a wide range of films, including Bad Influence, White Palace, True Colors, Storyville, Wolf and Stargate. He has also appeared in TV movies and on Seinfeld. But with the iconoclastic, egocentric ladies' man civil litigator in Boston Legal, Spader has reached his largest audience.

Brought in to create havoc and buoy up the sinking law firm in the final year of The Practice (for which he won an Emmy), Spader then moved on to the show's spin-off, Boston Legal, once again playing Alan Shore. The character is not beneath lying, cheating or deception as he prepares his cases. When he and the firm's most colorful partner, played by William Shatner, put their heads together, the results are twisted and funny. The show is like no other on TV.

Spader's upbringing prepared him for the unusual. He grew up near Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where his parents were school-teachers. That didn't deter him from dropping out of Phillips Academy Andover in his junior year of high school. Spader moved to New York City, where he worked numerous odd jobs while attending acting classes. Currently separated from his wife, he keeps a low social profile in Hollywood, preferring to spend his free time with his two teenage sons.

Playboy sent Contributing Editor Lawrence Grobel, who last interviewed Kiefer Sutherland for the magazine, to talk to the notoriously press-shy actor. Grobel reports, "Every time I came across one of his fellow actors talking about him, whether Shatner or Camryn Manheim, words like 'weird' and 'scary' were used. I figured I was at the least in for a verbal adventure. Spader didn't disappoint. One of the first things he told me was, 'I'm a bad interview.' Fortunately that wasn't true, but he did prove much of what I'd heard: He's protective of his family and privacy, he doesn't much like journalists, and yes, he is a bit weird and scary."

[Q] Playboy: According to many articles about you, you're uncomfortable talking to journalists.

[A] Spader: That's the reason I do as little of this as possible.

[Q] Playboy: What do you have against doing interviews?

[A] Spader: I hear people say, "I hate publicity," but they're saying it to a journalist, so I don't believe it. When I see someone getting into fights with photographers or talking about how much he hates to be photographed, to me it's bullshit. I've never been a great believer in what people say, as opposed to what they do. They're two different things and often contradictory. I believe what they do. Besides, I don't like talking about myself.

[Q] Playboy: Then why did you agree to this interview?

[A] Spader: Because my income now depends on my ability to do interviews. For years I failed to see the connection. It's not just that I dislike being interviewed. I don't have a problem sitting and talking. I'm just not comfortable talking about myself. It's a dilemma for me. I'm a bad interview. I don't take pride in it.

[Q] Playboy: Yet here we are. And now that you're on a hit TV show, you must be required to deal with the media more than ever before.

[A] Spader: There's a thin line I try to walk. I do enough to keep working but not so much that I have no private life or call too much attention to myself. I don't like the spotlight.

[Q] Playboy: You're an actor. If you don't like the spotlight, why did you sign up for The Practice last season?

[A] Spader: What interested me was the unique opportunity of the situation. Usually if you're going to do a television show, you do a pilot and then maybe six episodes. If it takes off, you have to commit to, like, five years. But all I had to do was commit to a year, and they were going to commit to a year. It sounded like great fun to spend a year as this character. I'd never done that before. The longest I'd ever worked on a character was four months.

[Q] Playboy: Now you've moved on to Boston Legal. William Shatner, your co-star, has said he wasn't sure if Boston Legal would last more than a few episodes. He said he couldn't tell if it was supposed to be a drama or a comedy.

[A] Spader: A TV series is different from a film in that it's liquid; it shifts and changes from week to week. I'll do an episode that's dead-on straight drama one week, and the next week it's fun and games. Boston Legal is still figuring out its tone.

[Q] Playboy: Shatner has said you're as recalcitrant as a donkey until you can find the right way to deliver a line. He also thinks you're a little weird.

[A] Spader: I will take responsibility for any given behavior at any given time.

[Q] Playboy: What's he like to work with?

[A] Spader: I have great fun doing scenes with him. My favorite people are always eccentrics, and Bill is one. When Bill is at his most eccentric, I admire him the most.

[Q] Playboy: When you first joined The Practice Camryn Manheim said she was afraid of you. She said, "He's weird and strange and eccentric." That's two people who have called you weird. Do you take it as a compliment?

[A] Spader: It is, I guess. At times it could be an attribute, at other times a fault. It depends on the circumstances. She could be lying, too, you know. She doesn't seem like a very scared person.

[Q] Playboy: Do people often feel trepidation around you?

[A] Spader: I notice that people tend to treat me with a healthy amount of distance.

[Q] Playboy: Was there additional tension on the set of The Practice because you came on knowing that most of the existing cast was being fired?

[A] Spader: If there was a feeling of tension at the beginning of the season, it was because there had been blood on the floor. Six characters had been removed from the show. I was hired after they were fired.

[Q] Playboy: Did any of the remaining actors feel animosity toward you?

[A] Spader: None. They couldn't have been more hospitable and wonderful.

[Q] Playboy: Alan Shore, your character on The Practice and again on Boston Legal, has been described as childish, confrontational, antiauthority, repellent and compelling. How would you describe him?

[A] Spader: He's a rascal. He's a troublemaker. He has tremendous appetites. I haven't yet found what he's scared of, except maybe complacency. That would probably scare the hell out of him.

[Q] Playboy: You've also said he has a strong value system. What are his values, and do they jibe with yours?

[A] Spader: Not always. He cares for people, but he feels that respect must be earned. Until that point there's fair play. He values truth, even in its most embarrassing, destructive form.

[Q] Playboy: How much credit can you take for the nuances and behavior of the character, and how much can be credited to David Kelley?

[A] Spader: It's hard to tell. David doesn't write a tremendous amount on the page. He writes dialogue. How it's performed is up to you. I've been able to play Alan only because I like things that don't fit very well, that are contrary. And Alan is that. That's one of the most important things David wanted to bring to the show: humor. My character was going to be the vehicle for that.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think you've helped change the nature of the show?

[A] Spader: David is responsible for keeping the show going. He had this idea of how to keep The Practice running for another year. People had lost interest in it, and he had lost interest in it too. He was looking for something that would make him excited about writing it for another year, and he did. It turned into a big car wreck, and people came to watch the wreck.

[Q] Playboy: Kelley told you he wanted Alan to be a disruptive force. What else did he tell you?

[A] Spader: He said Alan was going to be someone who is alone in his life at the moment and has a tremendous appreciation for women, and his lifestyle reflects that. He has many relationships, but he is alone. He is disruptive, self-destructive and funny, and he's a misfit. David wanted him to provoke by bringing tremendous conflict in how to respond to him. He wanted not only the characters within the firm but the people he encounters, and therefore the audience, to be absolutely conflicted about their feelings toward him. And he wanted to be able to sustain that. David wanted Alan to be somebody who draws this tremendously complex, conflicting response all the time. He said, "I like that you don't know how you feel about him."

[Q] Playboy: How do you keep a character fresh after an audience gets used to him?

[A] Spader: I'll tell you exactly how. You put him in a set of circumstances, you think about what he might do, and you do the opposite.

[Q] Playboy: Would you agree with the TV critic who wrote that if Tony Soprano ever needed a lawyer he should hire Alan Shore?

[A] Spader: I've never seen that show.

[Q] Playboy: You've never seen The Sopranos? James Gandolfini, who plays Tony Soprano, was a fellow nominee for the 2004 Emmy, as were Martin Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland and Anthony LaPaglia. Pretty stiff competition.

[A] Spader: I had never seen any of their shows, so it was blissful ignorance for me. Their reputations precede them, so I admired that, but I didn't give a lot of thought to the competition. I've got a friend who likes to handicap horses, so when the nominations were announced he checked the Vegas line on it. The odds were against me. I was the long shot.

[Q] Playboy: When you won you congratulated the women in the audience on their taste in shoes. Was that a prepared speech, or were you winging it?

[A] Spader: The best way to deal with something like that is to go in cold. I'm not naturally afraid of things that come at me as a surprise. I choose to face things that way. Thinking about winning or losing and making a speech--that creates discomfort. I've spent my life ill prepared. But I was tremendously pleased and humbled.

[Q] Playboy: Which means more to you, the Emmy or the Golden Globe?

[A] Spader: I have no idea. I don't know enough about them. I do know that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which decides the Golden Globes, is made up of people you actually meet. You know who they are. I have no idea who decides the Emmys.

[Q] Playboy: Getting back to your shoe remark at the Emmys--

[A] Spader: Shoes and dresses. The women looked great; they were working hard to look nice. If you're at a loss for something to say or trying to engage a woman in a room, that seems like the best way.

[Q] Playboy: In the roles you play you don't have much trouble engaging women. Is that acting or who you really are?

[A] Spader: The first perk of theater is the girls. Working at night, staying up late, being with girls--it's that forever.

[Q] Playboy: Was that how you first experienced sex, through acting?

[A] Spader: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: Should a high school student who wants to get girls go into acting or become quarterback of the football team?

[A] Spader: Quarterback? He's in the locker room with a bunch of guys. He doesn't get laid at all. Football is played in the afternoon. You need a shower afterward. Come on, that doesn't get you laid. If you want to be with girls, go into theater. You're there at night, after school, and it's dark.

[Q] Playboy: Have you had a sexual experience that competes with the ones you've performed in your films?

[A] Spader: Without question. The sexual experiences I've had have far surpassed any sexual experience I've had on-screen.

[Q] Playboy: If you get any letters from women who have read this interview, will you respond?

[A] Spader: I don't read those letters. If I don't recognize the name on the envelope, I throw it out.

[Q] Playboy: Do you envy anything about women?

[A] Spader: The thing I envy most is their ability to have one orgasm right after another. Women are absolutely beautiful, perfect sexual creatures. They are divine. I live my life in awe of the beauty of women. The smell of women is just intoxicating. I wonder whether men have that sort of effect on women. I can't imagine they do.

[Q] Playboy: When you were a kid, did you look at nude photographs of women?

[A] Spader: I had National Geographic my whole life, so I saw naked women. But I was also surrounded by naked women. I grew up in a household with women running around naked all the time, and they had friends over who were naked all the time, so I didn't have to look far.

[Q] Playboy: Including when you were going through puberty?

[A] Spader: Yeah. I saw my sisters, their friends and my mother naked from when I was a baby. All the time. We grew up in a very open household.

[Q] Playboy: While on-screen nudity isn't a problem for you, you went to far more exotic realms with Crash and Secretary. What intrigued you about the S&M relationship between your character and Maggie Gyllenhaal's in Secretary?

[A] Spader: I hadn't ever read anything like it. It was funny and sweet, yet it had this other element that was unusual.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever had a similar relationship or fantasized about one?

[A] Spader: I certainly understand the relationship between pleasure and pain, the practice of the behavior. To the exclusion of other forms of sexuality? That I'm not familiar with. That's what was unique to me, that this form of sexuality excluded other forms. I prefer to incorporate the relationship between pleasure and pain with everything else in the sexual soup.

[Q] Playboy: Does a woman want a man to be dominant in a relationship?

[A] Spader: Some. Some women don't at all. Some women want to be the dominant one entirely.

[Q] Playboy: Does sex intrigue you more than other subjects?

[A] Spader: That's what the world seems to be about to me. Once animals figure out how to survive, the next thing they do is fuck. People have tried to evolve--they're so sophisticated, yet they're not at all. They have sex subverting them all the time. [laughs] I'm reckoning with it at all times of the day and night.

[Q] Playboy: How many times in your life have you experienced real love?

[A] Spader: It would be an indiscretion to talk about it, but I have experienced it.

[Q] Playboy: Are love stories difficult to make?

[A] Spader: Yes. You're supposed to fall in love with somebody. That's your job. But what if you do? It's a tricky emotion to play around with. It's so seductive. That's the problem--love is the one emotion actors allow themselves to believe. Again and again. That's why they all get into such fucked-up relationships. They'll go off and play a killer but won't allow themselves to believe they're a killer. They don't see that it's the same thing.

[Q] Playboy: You've done numerous sex scenes. How do you handle them?

[A] Spader: A sex scene is often treated as a stunt in a film, and then it's hard to do and generally doesn't meld well with the rest of the film. I try to treat it as just another scene. You come in, communicate what's going on and be as comfortable as you can be.

[Q] Playboy: Who are the scenes tougher for, men or women?

[A] Spader: I can't speak for other men, except for Elias Koteas, who played Vaughan in Crash, because he's the only man I've had a sex scene with. My sex scenes with women have always gone well. Much of it depends on how much experience you have doing scenes of an intimate and graphic sexual nature. I'm not uncomfortable with it at all, and I try to make the person I'm working with as comfortable as possible so they'll feel free to be able to do what they need to do for the scene.

[Q] Playboy: According to director Steven Shainberg, during one rehearsal for Secretary you asked Gyllenhaal if she masturbated often and then told her you did as often as you could. Is that accurate?

[A] Spader: I have no memory of it. I might have said it.

[Q] Playboy: Do you remember how you first learned about masturbation?

[A] Spader: Yes. I learned about it the way every boy learns about it. You discover that rubbing your cock against something creates arousal.

[Q] Playboy: You spanked Gyllenhaal in the movie. She said she didn't wear a pad, forgetting that a scene like that might require a number of takes. Apparently there were 15 takes, and her ass was bruised and needed body makeup for later scenes.

[A] Spader: That's her story, her business. You're asking me to report on something that's entirely about someone else.

[Q] Playboy: You were there. You did the spanking.

[A] Spader: It's her business.

[Q] Playboy: Gyllenhaal said she felt you and she didn't get to know each other as human beings very well. Did you feel that way as well?

[A] Spader: We got to know each other within the context of who the characters were. That was the extent of it. That's generally what I'm doing when I'm on the set. I'm not looking to make friends.

[Q] Playboy: Is Crash the most controversial film you've made?

[A] Spader: Without question.

[Q] Playboy: The screening at Cannes was booed. The film was also booed when it was awarded a runner-up jury prize.

[A] Spader: The screening I was at went extremely well. It was a completely divisive film in terms of its reaction at Cannes. From reports I heard of the press screenings, people were either walking out or giving it a standing ovation.

[Q] Playboy: Would you ever be reluctant to do another film like Crash?

[A] Spader: Films like Crash and Secretary satisfied a certain curiosity about something I didn't understand. Whenever I find something I don't understand, I'm curious about it.

[Q] Playboy: Did you understand S&M or how car wrecks could be erotic after you made those films?

[A] Spader: Better. And that's a reason to do the films.

[Q] Playboy: Did you incorporate what you learned into your private life?

[A] Spader: Sure.

[Q] Playboy: If we could unlock your private life, would it be a Pandora's box?

[A] Spader: It just might be.

[Q] Playboy: Was it always that way? What was growing up near Cape Cod like?

[A] Spader: I grew up on a boarding school campus, Brooks School, north of Boston. It was a very rural setting. My father taught English at Brooks. My mother taught at a grammar school in the next town. I went to Phillips Andover.

[Q] Playboy: What was your life like?

[A] Spader: I spent all my time on a bicycle, either in the woods or by the lake or the ocean, climbing trees, damming up streams, having snowball fights, making jumps with my bike. Because both my parents were teachers, we also spent a tremendous amount of time traveling. They took sabbaticals, and we traveled to Europe a lot. During the first sabbatical we spent a year there, and during the second we took half a year. I was 11. We drove all over--France, England, Italy, Yugoslavia.

[Q] Playboy: As a child, did you know what you wanted to be when you grew up?

[A] Spader: Yeah, I wanted to be a bank robber, gangster, cop, cowboy, Indian or spy.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever take any classes your parents taught?

[A] Spader: I had two years of nursery school and a year of kindergarten with my mother. I can still picture it today--making trouble and having her kick me out of the room, then peering through the little window by the door as class continued.

[Q] Playboy: Did you get into much trouble as a kid?

[A] Spader: I got into trouble a lot, but it was always of a disruptive, playful nature. I would go on a sleepover at some kid's house. We'd be up late laughing and goofing off. After the first night I spent over at my best friend Will's house, his mother said to him, "That boy's never coming back to spend another night at our house." And of course we became best friends. I was always getting into trouble in school, disrupting class, getting kicked out of class. But it was all just fun. I've never been particularly good with authority, rules or sacred cows of any kind. I'm the kid who's going to make noise during the sermon.

[Q] Playboy: Considering that your parents were teachers, how did they handle your dropping out of Phillips Academy in your junior year?

[A] Spader: It crept up on everybody and happened rather amicably. There was no dramatic change. I wasn't in disciplinary trouble at school. Andover said to me when I was going to leave, "Go away. Take a break. If you want to come back at any time, we'll welcome you back. Maybe you need a break. Whatever you want to do, go and do." My parents were part of this. So I went down to New York. Right when I got my driver's license I was gone. I had spent every vacation working since I was 12. As soon as I was able to fill out a W-4 form I was employed. My sisters were at Wellesley and Wesleyan at the time. I was very independent. I never said to myself, "Well, that's it. I'm done with school-work." But I guess I was.

[Q] Playboy: During the five years prior to making the 1997 medical drama Critical Care, you spent a lot of time in hospitals for the births of your children and visiting your parents, who were ill.

[A] Spader: Yeah, my father more than my mother. My father passed away three weeks before I started shooting that film. It was very difficult.

[Q] Playboy: You chose to bring your father home rather than have him stay in the hospital. Were you with him at the end?

[A] Spader: Yes. He'd had tremendous difficulty communicating for several years, so it was hard to decipher what he did and didn't know. I felt there was communication between us, but it could have just been my projecting. He said "I love you" to me before he died, though he also could have said something else and I might have thought he said that or wanted him to have said that. He had severe aphasia at the time.

[Q] Playboy: You have said you've seen death happen in many different ways. How many deaths have you seen?

[A] Spader: I've seen animals die--I've shot animals. I've seen my father die. I've had many friends die from AIDS, age, suicide and homicide.

[Q] Playboy: What is the most shocking death you've experienced?

[A] Spader: Suicide. But that may have been the timing and my age. A close friend of mine committed suicide when I was 17. That upset me.

[Q] Playboy: At what time were you shooting animals?

[A] Spader: I stopped shooting animals at an early age, and then I stopped having anything to do with guns when I was in my 30s.

[Q] Playboy: A profile of you in this magazine 15 years ago mentioned that you had weapons in the trunk of your car: a crossbow, a lance, a 12-inch knife and a whip. Why were you driving around with an arsenal?

[A] Spader: I grew up with weaponry of all kinds. I was given a BB gun and a .22 rifle. I had air-gun pistols and slingshots. I've carried a knife on me since I was 10. [pulls out a large pocketknife and opens the blade]

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever forget to take that out of your pocket at the airport?

[A] Spader: It doesn't go with me to the airport. It goes in a suitcase. When I get to wherever, I take it out of the suitcase.

[Q] Playboy: Do you carry that knife with you all the time, or do you have a collection from which to choose?

[A] Spader: I've got a bunch of knives. For the past six months I've been carrying this because it seems to be the most efficient. It's an excellent knife. I had my knives taken away once. When we were 10 or 11 a friend and I put on a performance of Robin Hood for our parents as a way to make candy money. Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham meet in Sherwood Forest and get into a fight--that was the whole play. Our parents came. My friend came into the forest, and I leapt out and whipped out my Boy Scout knife. The parents were horrified, the play came to a halt, and the knife was taken away. It sat on my father's desk for a long time after that. Anyway, at the time that Playboy piece was written I was shooting a film in Florida, where I bought the crossbow. I hooked up with one of the stunt guys and went to a knife and gun show, or maybe I had a catalog and ordered a crossbow. I still have it somewhere. I doubt I had a lance in my car. That sounds a little odd to me. That seems like something you'd leave at home.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you stop collecting weapons?

[A] Spader: I lost interest in firearms because we had a dog that was scared to death of the sound of a rifle shot. Shooting the gun in the backyard or backwoods seemed like a terrible thing to do because the dog always came with us. I didn't have a taste for killing animals. I just shot a couple of squirrels, skinned them and ate them. I really had more of an interest in drying the skins out and seeing if I could make a hat out of them.

[Q] Playboy: How does squirrel taste?

[A] Spader: Like tough, rubbery chicken. Everything seems to taste like chicken.

[Q] Playboy: Has anyone ever pointed a gun at you?

[A] Spader: The only person to point a gun at me with aggression was a police officer. He was arresting somebody who was right next to me in New York City, right near Central Park. We were sitting on a park bench, and the officer wanted to arrest him. By association I got the gun pointed at me as well.

[Q] Playboy: The police thought you were with him, but you weren't?

[A] Spader: I was with him, but the police weren't interested in me.

[Q] Playboy: Was it a drug bust?

[A] Spader: Um....

[Q] Playboy: Were you too stoned to be afraid?

[A] Spader: No. I wasn't stoned at all, and it wasn't that terrifying. It was surprising. It happened rather quickly.

[Q] Playboy: Did they arrest your friend?

[A] Spader: He wasn't a friend. I didn't know the guy. Yeah, they threw him in the car. They couldn't have given a shit about me. They said, "What's that in your hand?" And I went [demonstrates a dropping motion], "Nothing." [laughs] It was New York in the 1970s, a very different time.

[Q] Playboy: You played a drug dealer and pimp in Less Than Zero. Did you use drugs then?

[A] Spader: I didn't.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever take anything harder than LSD?

[A] Spader: No.

[Q] Playboy: You did take LSD?

[A] Spader: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: Was it scary?

[A] Spader: No.

[Q] Playboy: Pleasurable?

[A] Spader: Yes.

(concluded on page 150)James Spader(continued from page 62)

[Q] Playboy: Should marijuana be legal?

[A] Spader: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: How do you talk to your boys about drugs? Do you tell them that it's a very different world than it was 20 years ago?

[A] Spader: That's the approach. But it's not just about drugs. It's about many things. I grew up in a part of the country where, when I reached a certain age, I got a BB gun for Christmas and then the next year a .22 rifle, and we'd go target shoot and goof around. That doesn't exist anymore. I grew up at a time when you'd get a pocketknife at a certain age, then you'd get a sheath knife and wear it around. You'd carve a stick in the woods. It was a different time. Sex and play, education and curriculum--behavior was different then. You were allowed to be unconcerned about certain things. Today people have to be careful.

[Q] Playboy: Many actors are malcontents. Marlon Brando said acting is a bum's life and that quitting acting is a sign of maturity. Laurence Olivier called acting a masochistic form of exhibitionism. Anthony Hopkins said being an actor is nothing special. He said, "Actors are nothing. Most actors are pretty simple-minded people who just think they're complicated." Why do so many actors put down their profession?

[A] Spader: You would hope it's out of a sense of humility, but there's also a certain amount of self-loathing. Acting is easy and fun. You earn a lot of money, and you bang out with girls. The profession is given tremendous significance within our society, but it's not really worthy of it. But why is that so awful? The reason the statements of those gentlemen seem so vitriolic toward their own profession is just that they're juxtaposed against how other people perceive the profession. You do struggle with the immaturity of it.

[Q] Playboy: What degree of reality do your characters have for you after you've finished playing them?

[A] Spader: I don't think movies or television have any basis in reality at all. It's all just pretend. That's what's fun about it. Alan Shore can say all the stuff to people you're not going to say in real life. Who behaves like that?

[Q] Playboy: What's the greatest risk you've taken as an actor?

[A] Spader: As an actor? Acting isn't a risky profession. There certainly are no prevalent health issues involved.

[Q] Playboy: Well, in Last Tango in Paris Brando improvised some scenes that were considered more revealing than things most actors had done before.

[A] Spader: What's the risk there? He's lauded for it. He's remembered for it. You're still talking about it with respect and admiration. What the hell's the risk? There's no peril there. Acting can be a tremendously fun way to earn a living, and it's not particularly taxing. I'm very lucky. I've earned my living in other ways; I've had a lot of different jobs.

[Q] Playboy: The funniest thing we've read about your early jobs is that you taught yoga in New York City even though you had never practiced it. True story?

[A] Spader: Yeah. You could adjust the temperature and the lights in the room, so I turned the temperature up a bit and the lights down. I got to the point where I could actually lie down, shut my eyes and talk them through every position I was going to put them in. I thought the whole thing was about relaxing. [laughs] I realized later that what I was doing had no relation to yoga at all. They weren't even yoga positions. They were stretching positions. I was giving them a stretching class. I'd get them in positions and then fall asleep because it was so fucking hot in the room. Then I'd come to, and they'd be stuck in this position all peering up and looking, and I'd pretend I just wanted them to relax some more.

[Q] Playboy: Other jobs included shoveling manure at the Claremont Riding Academy, unloading railroad cars, driving meat trucks and being a messenger. Were any of them fun?

[A] Spader: Believe me, unloading railroad cars is a lot easier than loading. They were plastic goods. My friend's father owned a warehouse, so I went to work for him for 90 days, after which you had to join the union. I was just doing it for a summer job. If I had joined the union, the dues would have wiped out what I was making. I didn't stay at any of these jobs for more than a couple of months. I was living in New York. Christ, if I needed a job I could have gotten one in two days.

[Q] Playboy: You have said that working in a small record shop in New York was the worst of all the jobs you had prior to acting. Why?

[A] Spader: It was so fucking boring. That was the only retail job I've ever had. It was particularly boring because the owners were putting all their profits up their noses. They didn't put any back into the store, so they never had any product. There wasn't a single record that anyone was interested in buying. You'd be there for hours, and there would be no customers.

[Q] Playboy: But you're a fan of music and frequently attend concerts.

[A] Spader: I have been to hundreds and hundreds of concerts.

[Q] Playboy: Which ones have been the most memorable?

[A] Spader: It would be difficult to single one out because you can never underestimate the impact of the drugs you happen to be using. I should be careful about saying that. I have a 15-year-old.

[Q] Playboy: So of all the concerts you've attended, you can't single any out?

[A] Spader: There are certain people I've seen so many times. Like Bob Dylan--I'm a big Dylan fan. I love his music so much, I don't want to fuck with his message. I listen to an enormous amount of blues, jazz, classical, opera, reggae, bluegrass, rock and roll, Cuban music, African music. But more of my life has been spent listening to Bob Dylan than anything else. That's been the music to my ears. When I listen to his music it lives in the memories of my life. I went to the Sundance Film Festival one year and Dylan was playing at a ski resort nearby, so I happened on that. In Dublin I was shooting a film and saw a Dylan concert there.

[Q] Playboy: Do you know him? Do you go see him after a show?

[A] Spader: I have gone back and talked with Bob.

[Q] Playboy: Is he an easy guy to talk to?

[A] Spader: I've always found him to be very easy to talk to. What dictates the length and breadth of the conversation is that it's usually late at night and I'm ready to get back to the hotel, and he's hot and tired as well. We'll talk for a few minutes. I've always found him engaging, nice and generous with me.

[Q] Playboy: Three years ago you said, "I'm 42, and I have no idea who I am." Any idea today?

[A] Spader: Sands are shifting constantly. [laughs]

[Q] Playboy: The London Times wrote about the way you approach interviews: "His answers, when they come, are precise, articulate but self-consciously contrived. Like many actors, he performs in an interview, playing the slightly anguished role of an actor forced to expose too much of himself." You said when we first started talking that you were doing this interview reluctantly. Were you playing a role for most of it?

[A] Spader: No, I think what that person wrote is mostly commentary. I am extremely careful. And from what I've read through the years, I'm never careful enough. So I've become more and more insulated every time I do this.

[Q] Playboy: Now that it's over, what do you think? Any regrets?

[A] Spader: Just one: that I agreed to do it.

I was always getting into trouble. I've never been particularly good with authority, rules or sacred cows. I'm the kid who's going to make noise during the sermon.

I grew up with weaponry of all kinds. I've carried a knife on me since I was 10. I've got a bunch of knives.