Age: 79
male
James Howard Woods (born April 18, 1947) is an American actor. He is known for starring in films such as Once Upon a Time in America, Salvador, Nixon, Ghosts of Mississippi, Casino, and Hercules, as well as in the television legal drama Shark. He has won two Emmy Awards, and earned two Academy Award nominations. He started his career in minor roles on and off-Broadway before making his Broadway debut in The Penny Wars (1969), followed by Borstal Boy (1970), The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1971) and Moonchildren (1972). Woods' early film roles include The Visitors (1972), The Way We Were (1973) and The Gambler (1974). He starred in the NBC miniseries Holocaust (1978) opposite Meryl Streep. He rose to prominence portraying Gregory Powell in The Onion Field (1979). He earned two Academy Awards nominations: one for Best Actor for his role as journalist Richard Boyle in Salvador (1986) and for Best Supporting Actor for playing white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith in Ghosts of Mississippi (1996). Notable film roles include Videodrome (1983), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Immediate Family (1989), The Hard Way (1991), Chaplin (1992), The Specialist (1994), Casino (1995), Contact (1997), Another Day in Paradise (1998), The Virgin Suicides (1999) and Jobs (2013). He served as an executive producer on Christopher Nolan's biographical drama film Oppenheimer (2023). For his television roles, he is the recipient of two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for portraying as D.J. in the CBS movie Promise (1987) and Bill W. in the ABC film My Name Is Bill W. (1989). He has also played Roy Cohn in Citizen Cohn (1992) and Dick Fuld in Too Big to Fail (2011). He starred in the CBS legal series Shark (2006–2008), and had a recurring role in the Showtime crime series Ray Donovan (2013). He has voiced roles for Hercules (1997), Recess: School's Out (2001), Stuart Little 2 (2002), the videogame Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004) and Surf's Up (2007), as well as voicing himself once in The Simpsons (1993), and several times in Family Guy (2005–2016).
James Woods
Eugene Landy
for Eugene Landy in Smile: The Life of Brain Wilson
Suggested by captainwhaddock
Brian Wilson is one of the most fascinating figures in music history, and it is no surprise that every film about the Beach Boys has inevitably focused more on him than any of the other members. Love and Mercy gave us a very good portrait of the man, but somehow, I don't feel that's enough. Brian Wilson did so much for music, and yet no one really knows about him. So much of his work is groundbreaking, even by today's standards. When you listen to it, it makes you feel like you're in the room with the Beach Boys as they're recording it. So I want to see a movie about Brian Wilson that's told through the music itself, showing what it looks like inside his head. This would be a much more surreal, psychedelic, dream-like version of his life, making you feel like you're living in the 60s with him. Just think something like Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises or Ken Russell's Mahler, but set in the '60s with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. I hope it wouldn't just do the cradle-to-grave format that was satires in Walk Hard, but I think it might work.
