Spader Breaks Out of the Mold With ‘sex, lies’

“My agent called me up and said, ‘I have a script here that is scaring a lot of people off.’ I said, ‘Well, sounds perfect”

“sex, lies and videotape” indeed proved to have a perfect role for James Spader, winning him the best-actor award at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival after a string of smarmy supporting parts.

In a review of the film, Newsweek said: “Who knew that Spader, formerly typecast as an arrogant yuppie brat, has such quiet, insinuating charisma?” The New York Times wrote that he plays his part “with a hesitant half-smile and tentative voice that makes him sweet and sinister at once, keeping everyone off-balance.”

The 29-year-old Spader, an introspective, nomadic sort, is not far removed from Graham, his mysterious character in the darkly funny psychological drama, which opens in San Diego County on Friday. In his search for himself, Graham lives mostly out of the trunk of his car. He resists renting an apartment because he wants only one key in his life--the key to his automobile.

“Here’s a guy who thinks he knows himself very, very well,” Spader said of Graham. “Just when you think you know yourself, you find out you don’t know who you are at all. That’s true in my own life.”

In the $1.2-million film, the first effort of 26-year-old writer-director Steven Soderbergh, Graham’s propensity for life on the road is among the least of his unusual traits. As a professed pathological liar and impotent lover, Graham’s only sexual satisfaction comes from videotaping women discussing their sexual fantasies for his later viewing pleasure.

“I wanted to play the character for the same reason people seem to respond to the film,” said Spader, seated on the porch of his secluded Hollywood Hills home. Wearing jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt, he resembled a ‘60s version of James Dean--if Dean drank Evian water.

“The movie is all about issues and emotions and humor that we all live with. And when you read that in a piece of material, you recognize it instantly as something that’s profoundly private and intimate. The opportunity to break that out of your life and play with it out in the open is,” he paused, “compelling.”

Another similarity between himself and Graham: “I like women more than men. I’m more comfortable around women than men. That’s probably because of environment. I have two older sisters--no brothers. I’ve lived with women all my life. And I never cease to be amazed, and surprised, and humored, and stimulated, by the women in my life.”

Spader said movie audiences traditionally have no problem identifying his character on the screen. He has spent much of his career in roles that call for him to preen and sneer down at theater audiences with the smugness of a self-satisfied brat.

“I play a lot of rich bad guys,” Spader said, smiling.

His resume for America’s Most Unwanted Yuppie includes “Pretty in Pink,” in which he tried to cajole best-buddy Andrew McCarthy from falling for the unpopular Molly Ringwald. In “Baby Boom,” he played the sidewinding overachiever after Diane Keaton’s job. He was a drug-dealing parasite in “Less Than Zero.” And in “Wall Street,” Spader played a lawyer who gave in to the temptation of insider trading.

“A whole bunch of movies I had done came out all at once, and I was doing a lot of publicity for them,” he said. “Different interviewers kept asking me if I was worried about getting typecast, and I realized I wasn’t worried about getting typecast until I started doing publicity. There’s a real need out there to try to pigeonhole actors. I think people are frustrated. People don’t like to be confused.”

Spader was raised on the campus of a New England prep school where his father was an English teacher. He never went to college--instead, when he was 17, he moved to New York. There, he worked at a warehouse unloading railroad cars, at a meatpacking plant as a truck driver, at a riding academy as a stable boy and as a foot messenger in the city. In his spare time, he acted.

“I was just playing it week to week, really. The next thing I knew weeks (had) turned into years and I was still doing odd jobs and acting,” he said.

Spader’s big movie debut was listed in the credits of a soft-core sex flick as Drunk Guy. From there, he became Brooke Shields’ older brother in the 1981 film “Endless Love.” After his steady diet of successful supporting parts, Spader was fed a feature role as twins in last year’s mystery thriller “Jack’s Back.” Despite positive reviews, the film received only regional release and went immediately to video. Then came “sex, lies and videotape.”

In the weeklong rehearsals conducted by Soderbergh, Spader stretched and defined the character of Graham--especially for the end of the film, where Graham discovers himself and in doing so, uncovers the lies his fellow characters are living. Spader said that Soderbergh derived the title of the film by asking himself what Graham would say if asked what the film was about.

“I would venture to say that if Graham was asked before the end of the film what it was about, he might say, ‘sex, lies and videotape.’ But at the end I think he would say, ‘I really don’t have a clue.’ Sex and lies--videotape is a tool, that’s it--sex and lies have complexities that are so vast they can’t be simplified. I hope that people are intrigued enough and curious enough about who Graham is and what the film is about to try and figure them out.”

Spader plays an upwardly mobile young executive in the suspense-thriller “Bad Influence,” now shooting in the Los Angeles area. The recent publicity surrounding his co-star, Rob Lowe, has shown the reserved Spader a side of Hollywood that he doesn’t care for.

“I think there’s a lot of real ugliness in this business,” said Spader. “I just make a real attempt to not let that touch my life too much.”

Spader tries to put as much distance as possible between himself and his burgeoning career whenever he can. He has been known to hop in his car and spend months at a time driving across the United States. He used to tool around the country in a 1969 Porsche 911 convertible, until he married recently and--with a baby on the way--traded his sporty, easy rider for a “more domestic car.”

“The greatest thing about acting is that it’s free-lance,” he said. “Free-lance gives you a choice that is so dear, so very dear to me.

“I like to make my own choices in life. When the job I’m working on now is done, I can do whatever it is I want to do for the rest of my life to earn my living. Anything.”