James Spader on why he exclusively stars in weird movies: “I’m interested in perversity”
There are many people who, when asked to describe their favourite kinds of films, describe something so sick and twisted that you question the stability of their sanity.
It could be a friend who’s obsessed by the work of Lars von Trier, somehow finding solace in his fucked-up stories that highlight the innate selfishness and evil of humankind. Or it could be someone who loves David Cronenberg, despite the fact that nobody can ever seem to understand them and make sense of the strangely mesmerising violence that marks each film.
However, this was a very particular fascination for one actor who formed an entire career based around his affinity towards dark and borderline psychotic characters, with James Spader describing the psychological foundation of his filmography and the stories that most captivate him.
Some might know him as the sexually sadistic lawyer in Secretary, while others might know him for his soft-spoken character in Sex, Lies and Videotape, but there is no denying that if you’ve seen Spader in something, he was most likely playing a highly intelligent, quiet and subtly sexual oddball who stirs the pot in the lives of other people.
In most of his films, he seems to quietly relish in seeing the chaos he inflicts on other people, whether it be causing everyday strangers to have colossal sexual awakenings that tear their lives apart or encouraging others to seek sexual pleasure from the thrills of a planned car crash.
In a day and age defined by safe cinema and films that adhere to the status quo, the type of work that Spader became known for was a marker of the creative risks that directors were more encouraged to make in arthouse cinema, with no rules or restrictions as filmmakers voiced some of the most complex and inarticulable struggles of the human condition.
But for Spader, these strange, confrontational and sometimes controversial stories were the exact kind of projects that he wanted to lend his talents to, being drawn towards under-explored and mysterious aspects of the human experience that we rarely want to shine a light on.
When describing his thought process and approach to his craft, Spader expanded on this interest, saying, “I think I’m just drawn towards the peculiarities of life, you know I’m interested in that. I’m interested in perversity, I’m interested in oddity. I’m curious about that. I’m curious about taboos, I’m curious about secrets. That’s what interests me. And so those, tends to be what I look for in work”.
Just from looking at Crash, Secretary and Sex, Lies and Videotape, these interests are very clear, with each film looking at things that society at large has deemed perverse, but exploring them in a way that exposes a genuinely moving and loving core. It is easy to judge a book by its cover and be intimidated by the kinds of films that Spader worked on, but after a closer look, you see his sensitive approach to people who are grossly misunderstood, and realise that each story is actually quite beautiful.
