James Spader

Spader attended The Pike School, where his mother taught art and Brooks School in North Andover, Massachusetts, where his father, Todd, taught. The family lived on campus, and Spader is one of the school's most famous alumni. Afterwards he attended Phillips Academy, but he dropped out in the eleventh grade to pursue acting in New York City.

He met his wife, Victoria, while working in a yoga studio soon after he moved to New York in the early 1980s. She often traveled with him, either on location or just on the road. They married in 1987 and had two sons, Sebastian and Elijah. They divorced in 2004.

Known for his mastery of the smarmy, sexually deviant yuppie, Spader got his start in Pretty in Pink. He also played Alan Shore, the lead of the mostly-new cast which creator David E. Kelley put in place in 2003 for ABC's The Practice (for which he won an Emmy Award) and was given the lead in that show's spin-off, Boston Legal for which he won an Emmy in 2005 and thus became one of the few actors to win consecutive Emmys for playing the same character in two different series, (another being co-star William Shatner).

In October 2006, Spader narrated China Revealed, the first episode of Discovery Channel's documentary series Discovery Atlas.

Filmography