Celebrity
’80s Heartthrob From A Family Of Teachers Lives A Quiet Life—Inside His Private World Today
His intensity has always captivated viewers, yet when he’s not on TV, he’s a quiet, disciplined man who is cut off from technology.
He rejected his family’s academic trajectory by taking on a range of odd jobs, from teaching yoga to shoveling dung, before he unexpectedly found his way to Hollywood fame. He was born to teachers in Boston.
Childhood Roots, Unconventional Dreams
He followed his ambition to become an actor in New York. His parents were teachers at prestigious East Coast schools, and he grew up in an educated household. However, he was more of a performer than a student, and he frequently put on plays for family get-togethers.
He relocated to New York to pursue a career in acting, earning a living by doing manual labor-intensive jobs like teaching yoga and loading railroads. He met Victoria Kheel, a trained yoga instructor, at the gym. After over ten years together, their friendship turned into a romantic relationship, and they were married.
His preppy charm and keen intellect made him a perfect fit for 1980s Hollywood. He chose focus above popularity, however, and remained on the sidelines as friends like Eric Stoltz and Robert Downey Jr. embraced the excess of the time.
He has been refreshingly honest about one of the biggest constants in his life: obsessive-compulsive disorder. “I’m obsessive-compulsive,” he admitted in a 2014 interview. “I have very, very strong obsessive-compulsive issues. I’m very particular.”
He continued by explaining that his routines were vital to his everyday functioning and had an impact on every aspect of his life and performance, so these weren’t the kinds of eccentricities that people laughed off.
Not only is routine comfortable, it’s essential. His discipline has become a defining feature of his process, even though some may find it restricting. For others around him, however, that same intensity may make life unpredictable.
Rejecting the Digital World
James Todd Spader is his name. His opposition to fame is reflected in his rejection of technology. He once demonstrated his lack of a computer or other contemporary gadgets by holding up a tattered Razr phone.
“I have no computer, no electronics in my life. I have this broken phone. It rings, I’ll flip it open and the act of doing that shuts the phone off,” he said. Even his sons — then aged 16 and 20 — were unimpressed.
During a 2020 interview with Jimmy Fallon, he joked, “No, no, no, I couldn’t — This was the only option […] I don’t know how to work any of the stuff. I don’t have a laptop. I don’t know how to do any of it.”
That preference for low-tech, low-profile living extends into the public sphere. In a Playboy interview, when asked if women ever approached him in public, he replied, “Not particularly. I’ve been very successful keeping a private face on things, even out in public.”
He added, “If you’re recognizable and you want to draw people to you in public, you can do that. I don’t. If people put their lives in the public eye a lot, people feel as if they’ve gotten to know them through the media. I try not to open the door to my private life in a public way.”
From Bit Roles to Cannes Acclaim
James, an actor, played Brooke Shields’s brother in the 1981 romantic drama “Endless Love,” which was his first notable role. From there, a combination of television movies and Brat Pack feature appearances helped to shape his career.
James didn’t become well recognized until 1989’s “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” in which he played a sexual voyeur who upends the lives of three Baton Rouge citizens. He won the Cannes Film Festival’s Best Actor prize for his eerie portrayal, which paved the way for a string of intricate, frequently daring parts that would come to characterize his career.
Perhaps James’s most famous character is that of Alan Shore, the ethically lenient lawyer in David E. Kelley’s legal dramas, “The Practice” and “Boston Legal.” In addition to being nominated for several Screen Actors Guild Awards and a Golden Globe, he won three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series between 2004 and 2008.
Fatherhood, Divorce, and New Love
Sebastian and Elijah Spader are the two boys that James and Victoria have together. Sebastian was a real estate agent before becoming a filmmaker and producer.
Elijah, their other son, has also pursued a career in entertainment, working in audio post-production and even worked alongside his father on multiple episodes of “The Blacklist.”
Victoria and James got divorced in 2004. Soon after, he started a discreet, long-term relationship with Leslie Stefanson, a sculptor and actress. Currently, the couple and their five-year-old son, Nathanael Spader, reside in New York City.
The two also starred in the science fiction thriller “Alien Hunter,” which centers on the government agency’s covert botanical research at the South Pole and the discovery of an enigmatic alien black box there.
James’s Reflections on Being a Late-Life Dad
James has spoken candidly about becoming a father later in life, “I believe in a negative population growth. The other two were with another mother, so we have three boys that will replace all three of us.”
His perspective on fatherhood evolved throughout the years. He talked about how time seems to go more slowly today and that he has a better idea of what really important. The motivations for leaving home had evolved, and the allure of home had become more powerful. Experience and a more subdued form of awareness had molded what had once felt like ambition into the weight of decision.
Even during the pandemic’s isolation, James found small joys in fatherhood. In the interview with Jimmy, he shared, “My youngest son, my 12-year-old, we’d go out and line up beer cans on the big rock out on the far end of the garden and shoot at them with BB guns.”
James has maintained the same subdued rhythms throughout his whole career, from network television hits to Brat Pack movies. He protects his time, eschews the allure of contemporary technology, and surrounds himself with routine, family, and artistic endeavors. It’s a purposeful way of living, very different from the glamour of the red carpet and exactly the type of peaceful life James appears to favor.
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