If I don't need the money, I don't work. I'm going to spend time with my family and friends, and I'm going to travel and read and listen to music and try to learn a little bit more about how to be a human being, as opposed to learning how to be somebody else.

James Spader

I'm not someone so much interested in exploring a slice of life unless that is down the corridor, around the corner, up the alley, and down the rabbit hole. That, I like.

James Spader

I don't think anybody in the entertainment industry or in politics is surprised by the fact that those worlds are rife with promiscuity and irresponsibility - certainly a lack of accountability.

James Spader

People who supported Obama felt like they formed a relationship, that they were being spoken to. The way that campaign worked and the way he's worked during his first term is to make people feel like he's grasping their hand, whether it's by tweeting or email, moments after an event, sometimes during an event. It makes people relate to him.

James Spader

If I don't need the money, I don't work. I'm going to spend time with my family and friends, and I'm going to travel and read and listen to music and try to learn a little bit more about how to be a human being, as opposed to learning how to be somebody else.

James Spader

Acting is a great way to make a living, especially when I consider what my alternatives were and probably still are. I mean, you are only making movies. It is a lot less pressure than being a surgeon; although it seemed like the only other thing that I was qualified for was manual labour.

James Spader

I grew up a Red Sox fan. I grew up going to Fenway Park and the Museum of Fine Arts and the Science Museum and Symphony Hall and going to the Common, walking around. My whole family at different times lived and worked in Boston.

James Spader

Acting for me, is a passion, but it's also a job, and I've always approached it as such. I have a certain manual-laborist view of acting. There's no shame in taking a film because you need some money.

James Spader

I'm not a planner. I like to try something different, to just see what happens.

James Spader

I lost interest in firearms because we had a dog that was scared to death of the sound of a rifle shot.

James Spader

Sometimes with people their work is the most important thing to them, and sometimes the work enables you to do other things that are more important to you. I probably am closer to that.

James Spader

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.

James Spader

I'm paid well and am demanding of the people I work with, and therefore, I feel I should bring a lot.

James Spader

When doing theater, you have to find great satisfaction in the small things. There's going to be a repetition and a redundancy night after night, but it's the small variations in those moments - a word, a tone of voice, the smallest sense of enlightenment that can happen in an instant onstage - that will be the most rewarding.

James Spader

I pretty quickly move from an idea to possibilities for execution. If there's one advantage, I think, with working in television for even a short amount of time is trying to gain a faculty for processing a storyline or an idea and how to then best implement that and execute that as swiftly as possible.

James Spader

The unknown is very appealing to me. I like to be surprised. I love the idea I might know less at the end of reading something than I do at the beginning.

James Spader

For me, when working on a film or play or television show, everything for me starts with the screenplay and I am devoted to that and that is what I work from. Any research I do or any preparation I do on my own is all ultimately in service of that.

James Spader

If you find great difficulty in trying to reckon with the future or even the present, I think it's intuitive to start that process by reckoning with the past.

James Spader

I have very, very strong obsessive-compulsive issues. I'm very particular.

James Spader

You know, when you choose to make your living as an actor, it's all fine and good to look at it as some kind of artistic endeavor. At its best, it is that. But the fact is, most of the actors out there don't earn $3 million a picture and can't afford to take two years off between films and look for the right thing. Most of us are tradesmen.

James Spader

My career had been split pretty evenly between good guys and bad guys until I finally grew into myself enough to play a decent antihero, where you can combine the two.

James Spader