Welcome to The River Cocytus
HEY! HEY! HEY! Toots, ain't this guy great! James Woods! Personally one of my favorite actors and not just because he provides the vioce for my boss... no! That has nothing to do with it! ;)
JAMES WOODS (Hades) serves up a sizzling performance as the quick-scheming, acid-tongued hot head in charge of the Underworld who concocts some rather grand plans to take over Mount Olympus.
"Doing a voice for a Disney animated film makes you feel like you're a kid again," says Woods. "It makes you feel like the first time you were an actor and you were so amazed at what you're able to do and that somebody was actually paying you to do it. This experience has been as fresh and as new as any I've ever had in my career. It's just been fun since day one and I'm really glad that this magic has touched my life.
"I never realized how much the actors get to create their roles," notes the actor. "We get to create and ad-lib and come up with crazy lines. Everybody knows it's working if we're laughing. And if we're not laughing, then we think of something better. When I first came in for the part of Hades, I was feeling kind of silly that day, so I did him like a big Hollywood agent selling some guy on a bus-and-truck tour of some cheesy play. And for some reason, it stuck. And the more we did this kind of insane, loopy 'from-the-hip' stuff, the funnier it became to us. It's a great group effort and the Disney team is a great family to be a part of."
Facts about James!
His birthday is April 18th, 1947
He has weathered relationships
with two ex-wives and, among others,
actresses Nicollette Sheridan and Sean Young, and Julie Tesh, the
ex-wife of former Entertainment Tonight host John Tesh.
Film Credits
You gotta check this out!! GO HERE!
Killer: A Journal of Murder,
1996 (Carl Panzram)
Ghosts of Mississippi, 1996 (Byron De La Beckwith)
Nixon, 1995 (H. R. Haldeman)
For Better or Worse, 1995 (Reggie)
Casino, 1995 (Lester Diamond)
The Specialist, 1994 (Ned Trent)
Straight Talk, 1992 (Jack Russell)
Diggstown, 1992 (Gabriel Caine)
The Hard Way, 1991 (John Moss)
True Believer, 1989 (Eddie Dodd)
Immediate Family, 1989 (Michael Spector)
The Boost, 1988 (Lenny Brown)
Cop, 1988 (Lloyd Hopkins, also producer)
Best Seller, 1987 (Cleve)
Salvador, 1986 (Richard Boyle)
Stephen King's Cat's Eye, 1985 (Morrison)
Joshua Then and Now, 1985 (Joshua Shapiro)
Once Upon a Time in America, 1984 (Max)
Against All Odds, 1984 (Jake Wise)
Videodrome, 1982 (Max Renn)
Split Image, 1982 (Pratt)
Fast Walking, 1982 (Fast-Walking Miniver)
Eyewitness, 1980 (Aldo Mercer)
The Onion Field, 1979 (Gregory Powell)
The Black Marble, 1979 (Fiddler)
The Choirboys, 1977 (Harold Bloomguard)
Alex & the Gypsy, 1976 (Crainpool)
Night Moves, 1975 (Quentin)
Distance, 1975 (Larry)
The Gambler, 1974 (bank officer)
The Way We Were, 1973 (role)
The Visitors, 1972 (Bill Schmidt)
Hickey and Boggs, 1972 (Lieutenant Wyatt)
WOW!!!!
Quote:
"People are evil because they're
evil. Evil is an absolutely concrete thing. It
is not the result, as some pious liberals
like to think, of somebody being deprived
of a tennis racket."
YOU GO BOY!!
BRILLIANT,
angry, funny--violently opposed adjectives crash and pile up when James
Woods is under discussion. His first major screen appearance was as Barbra
Streisand's pre-Redford boyfriend in The Way We Were (1974). He maintained
this second-string status, as a fascinating and slightly menacing face
in the crowds of assorted seventies movies, until critics discovered him
in The Onion Field (1979)--a riveting study in criminal pathology in which
Woods plays an unrepentant cop-killer who milks the appeals system for
all it's worth. It was precisely the kind of breakthrough performance,
in an offbeat but deeply moving film, that was doomed to be ignored at
Oscar time in those dark days before the rise of the promotional videocassette.
Now, in a year when breakthrough performances and offbeat power are ruling
the roost, it seems doubly fitting that, out of all the mainstream films
released this past year, one of the few players to receive Academy recognition
is Woods, for his performance as the bigoted killer Byron de la Beckwith
in Ghosts of Mississippi. Again a true story, again the portrait of a shameless
killer as he evolves--but never repents--across decades. The film in no
way repeats The Onion Field, but the underlying similarity indicates that
what is great in the talent of James Woods is solid and constant, and that
the values of the Academy are at last catching up to him.
