James Woods` reputation precedes him. Abrasive. Intense. Belligerent. Driven. Outspoken. The kind of guy who doesn`t suffer fools gladly. The kind of actor who doesn`t suffer Hollywood gladly.
Here`s Woods on the subject of Hollywood some three years ago:
”Hollywood`s never done a thing for me. So I don`t expect it`s ever going to do anything in the future. I`m just ripping off pieces from its rotting underbelly. . . . ”
Here`s Woods assessing his own career three years ago: ”I`m not a Star with a capital S. I`m at the stage now where I`m sort of the king of the $5 million independent picture.”
Can this be the same man who is now starring in a major Hollywood studio picture, ”True Believer,” which opens next Friday in Chicago, and who is now happily singing the praises of his studio, Columbia Pictures?
Well, yes and no. ”Sure, I`ve changed over the last few years,” says Woods today. ”I guess I`ve become mellower. Happier, certainly.”
He positively beams as he shoots off on this new tack. ”I don`t think I`ve ever been so happy. I`m really pleased with `True Believer` and the way it`s being handled, everyone seems to think this is the film that will finally put me over the top, and I think so, too.
”On top of that, I`m wrapping up this other great project, also for Columbia, called `Immediate Family,` ” adds Woods. ”It costars Glenn Close, and it`s a very tender, funny film about adoption. After that, I`m doing `My Name Is Bill W.` with James Garner, and then a film for Universal with Michael J. Fox.”
But besides having an enviably full dance card, the actor also is a happier man in his personal life these days. ”I`m engaged to a great girl, we`re going to be married soon and I`m already contemplating fatherhood,” he announces in a rush.
If all this sounds too good to be true for an actor who is typically portrayed as just an extension of his larger-than-life screen presence, it isn`t. Woods is no longer the Hollywood outcast and renegade, a role, by his own admission, that he enjoyed playing to the hilt.
But neither is he completely converted. ”I`ve changed, but I think Hollywood`s changed even more,” he says. ”The mainstream is changing, and a major studio like Columbia is now doing pictures it would never have considered a few years back. With people like Dawn Steele at the top, I can honestly imagine a studio like Columbia doing `Salvador` now.
”If I was a renegade, it was in the sense that the majors weren`t dealing in the kinds of films I wanted to make before,” he adds. ”I just wasn`t interested in doing teen comedies or spaceship movies. I don`t think they are so much now, either.”
As proof of the studios` new direction, Woods cites ”True Believer,” in which he stars as maverick lawyer Eddie Dodd. ”The character was inspired by a real-life attorney from San Francisco named Tony Serra, who`s a brilliant and totally eccentric man, and very much a product of the `60s,” says Woods, who then adds casually, ”he`s an honest-to-God, old-fashioned hero.”
Hero? Does this mean that Woods has finally turned his back on playing murderous psychopaths and assorted sleazeballs, the roles that Hollywood automatically seemed to shovel his way after his all-too-real performance in
”The Onion Field” in 1979?
”Yeah, now I`ve hit my 40s, I`m maturing into a leading man and an all-around good guy,” he laughs. ”Except, to be fair, I don`t think a lot of the characters I`ve played have been that weird, except perhaps the killer in `The Onion Field.` People say I was another weirdo in `Once Upon a Time in America,` but they were all killers, and what about a comedy like `Joshua Then and Now`? I think if the public always perceives me as playing villains, it`s partly because a lot of my films just haven`t been seen.
”The truth is, I think I`ve had a lot of bad luck before I started becoming involved with the studios,” continues Woods. ”The fact is, the smaller, non-mainstream production companies will make some great movies, but they simply don`t have the marketing muscle and publicity apparatus to get `em out there.”
While Woods agrees that box-office disappointments such as ”Once Upon a Time in America,” ”Videodrome” and ”Salvador” (for which he received an Academy Award nomination) haven`t hurt his reputation, he`s quick to point out that, ”it`s just not the same when they do well on cable and video. You don`t get the same emotional satisfaction and punch you get with a hit movie. `Once Upon a Time in America` was one of the great tragedies of my life, and the people who should have got behind it didn`t, so it died on the vine.”
Woods is confident this won`t be the case with ”True Believer.” ”Dawn Steele, the new president at Columbia, inherited this picture and she could have easily dumped it,” he reports. ”But instead, she not only stuck with it, but when we had to move the production from San Francisco to New York for legal reasons, she immediately came up with the extra $3 million, and supported it all the way down the line.
”This was my first experience as `a star` in a major studio picture, and I was expecting the worst,” Woods admits. ”But they never once interfered, and it`s been a great experience, much to my surprise.”
For all such talk, Woods still has a way to go before he joins the ranks of the Hollywood elite in terms of leading men, a fact of which he`s well aware. ”I don`t think the studios or the public think of me as a traditional leading man, but then I don`t think that `True Believer` is really a traditional studio picture, either.
”That`s partly what appealed to me so much about the film in the first place. Here`s this character, Eddie Dodd, who`s also a bit outside the system. He was an idealist back in the `60s when he championed civil liberties, but by the late `80s, he`s become disillusioned and cynical. But then his idealism is re-ignited when he`s asked to defend a Korean gang member falsely accused of murder, and his new young clerk (played by Robert Downey Jr.) reminds him of his former self.
”It`s a terrific script, and Dodd represented some very contemporary issues and concerns,” Woods says.
Not that he looks back on the `60s through rose-tinted glasses. ”There were a lot of flaky people and attitudes back then, and I never contemplated dropping out.” Woods was an Army brat as a child and is the son of a military hero. ”And as for acting, I never even considered it until I was disqualified from joining the U. S. Air Force Academy because of an arm injury.
”I first got the bug while I was at MIT,” continues Woods, who ended up appearing in some 36 plays at the school, at Harvard and at the Theatre Company of Boston. ”In fact, I always intended to be a stage actor, and I`ve done almost 70 plays so far. I had no idea I`d end up making so many movies.
”But I`ve got no complaints,” he`s quick to emphasize. ”My career`s going great at last, and I`m no longer so frustrated. I just felt in the past that I had a lot to offer, and I was frustrated to see a lot of bozos get opportunities where I didn`t even get a chance to meet on the part. Now I`m getting the chances. So I`m a happy guy. Really.”
