James Woods

Passions

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Family

American actor with a gift for playing charming bad guys. He earned an Academy Award nomination in 1986 for "Salvador" and portraying a racist murderer in "Ghosts of Mississippi, 1996. Woods grew up in Warwick, R.I. When he was 12 and his dad died, an immigrant neighbor realized that he needed a father-figure. "He'd take me fishing every weekend and talk to me," Woods recalled in appreciation. Widely seen on stage in the Boston area during his college years, he moved to N.Y. to do several off-and-on Broadway productions, including "Conduct Unbecoming" in which he won an Obie Award. Wood's roles include "Contact," "The Way We Were," "The Onion Field, ""Nixon, "Casino" and "Against All Odds." He won an Emmy for his performance as a disturbed brother in the TV movie "Promise." In 1993, while working on the set of "Fallen Angels," a law suit was filed against him by former boxer Steve Pope who claimed that he had been kicked and injured by Woods. Woods rejected the advice by his attorneys to settle out-of-court and won the case against Pope 10/06/1997. His IQ has been tested at 180, as well as a perfect 800 on the verbal part of the SAT test and 779 on the math section. In 1990 Woods divorced Sarah Owens after a marriage of 3 1/2 weeks. They were together for four years, a time she claimed was abusive due to Wood's sudden rages. Link to Wikipedia biography