James Woods
    The Killer Touch

In Killer: A Journal of Murder, James Woods plays America's first serial killer Carl Panzram - who in 1930 sprinted to the gallows to demonstrate that, yes, he did deserve to die. Just like Panzram, Woods doesn't expect any sympathy. "There are no smiling nuns in this one," he chuckles. "That Dead Man Walking movie was made by people who are clearly self-avowed Hollywood liberals. It's blatantly obvious. I mean, I don't miss any of the people who have been killed by capital punishment. It's not like we lost out on some great novel that they were going to write - they're fuckin' rats, you know."
Woods' gleeful willingness to vent his spleen makes him one of the most entertaining interviewees in Hollywood. If he wasn't a 50-year-old actor on a sofa in a swank hotel in Los Angeles, you could imagine him in a pair of DMs metering ad hoc justice to the lily-livered do-gooders who are poisoning this world. Like politicians, for example . . . . "Henry Kissinger made a big thing about the fact that in the movie Nixon he was shown smoking a cigar even though he doesn't smoke cigars. Who gives a shit? We were more concerned about the fact that you were bombing Cambodia, you prick." Or OJ Simpson, whose trial he attended . . . . "The one thing you never got on TV was the fact that Fred Goldman was nine feet from OJ Simpson. God forbid that somebody ever did what I think this guy was never convicted of and I was nine feet from him. I'd fuckin' bring a rock and beat him to death right on the spot." And censorship . . . . "I don't believe in censorship or anything. I always believe that you live with your warts and all. Maybe they should have a few more Nazi flags in Germany just to remind people what happened there . . ."
Needless to say, the hyper-kinetic, -loud and -intelligent Woods didn't intend to enter such a namby-pamby profession as acting, he only fell into it when a career in medicine was scuppered by an injury to his right arm. Trying his luck on the boards, he was soon on Broadway and then in his first feature, The Visitors, for Elia Kazan in 1972.
All sorts of stuff followed, such as The Choirboys (1977) and the TV drama Holocaust with Meryl Streep, though it was not until 1979's The Onion Field, as a cold-blooded cop killer, that his star potential was realised. Then he drifted back into roguish supporting roles until his turn as Richard Boyle the ultimate journo scumbag, in 1986's Salvador won him his deserved turn in the spotlight. Oliver Stone publicly called him a "lunatic" but his Oscar nomination for that movie confirmed his status as one of the most brilliant live wires since De Niro. The American public's concern was duly aroused with the Sean Young shenanigans, Woods' co-star in The Boost, who after their break-up in 1987 sent him a butchered doll and photographs of mutilated animals, forcing Woods to take out a $2 million harassment lawsuit against her - subsequently settled out of court.
Then there were the strange rantings of his since discredited ex-wife Sarah Owen ("Just some fuckin' loser opportunist"), who proceeded to drag his name through the mud in the US tabloids. And although he carved a niche for himself in TV drama - winning plaudits for things like Citizen Cohn - and provided the odd gem of a performance in fare such as Midnight Sting and The Hard Way, he'd drifted away from cutting edge film stuff.
"I'm kind of intense," he ponders. "I'm not interested in walking around and smiling in a suit."
Woods only realised just how far amiss things were when he bumped into Tarantino at a party in 1992. "Quentin said, 'We offered you Reservoir Dogs and you didn't take it,' he explains, getting wound up even more. "I said, 'I'd never even heard of Reservoir Dogs until it was in the movie theatres . . .'."
Woods had been offered one of the plum roles but his agent of 17 years had neglected to tell him, leaving Woods to ponder just what else he'd missed out on. A swift agency change and a calculated "shop window" part in the tacky The Specialist soon did the trick and by the end of '95 he could add Nixon and Casino to his CV. Throw in his chilling portrait of real-life assassin Byron De La Beckwith in Rob Reiner's impending Ghosts from the Past and his next gig, the Carl Sagan ET beano Contact - opposite Jodie Foster - and the boy is in the throes of a Second Coming. In fact, his performance in Ghosts, playing the 73-year-old murderer of Civil Rights Champion Medgar Evers, is a veritable tour de force that won him a Best Supporting Actor nomination ten years on from his first. "It was a great character to play and we had so much footage on the guy, you could really study him. You don't usually have a chance to explore that kind of depth in that kind of character - not just of movement, but the voice, the makeup - it makes a huge difference." DidWoods visit Beckwith in jail? "You know, I had an opportunity to but I didn't want to," says Woods, pausing for a long overdue breath. "I mean, he's just some fucking killer . . ."