Spader leaps into action

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - James Spader has cornered the market on morally conflicted yuppies (Wall Street, True Colors) since his debut as a disturbing slacker with a secret in sex, lies and videotape.

At least he was a yuppie-turned-werewolf in Wolf. Unfortunately, few saw the now-on-video gem The Music of Chance, an offbeat sleeper based on a Paul Auster novel, in which Spader turned in an oily performance as a down-on-his-luck poker player.

"I loved playing that character," Spader says.

But in his new movie, the sci-fi epic StarGate, opening today, he flies through space, shoots bad guys, gets the girl and provides comic relief. There's even an action figure of him. Spader stares out through little round glasses and shrugs, "I have no relation to it."

Was StarGate a calculated change? A carefully orchestrated foray into a purposely different genre? A brilliant career move? Nope, says Spader, 34. He did the movie because "I thought it would be fun."

In fact, he says, he has no career plan and an understanding agent. "She's gotten sort of used to following my whim. I'm pretty stubborn, y'know?"

Though second-billed to Kurt Russell, Spader is the main character in StarGate, directed by Roland Emmerich (Universal Soldier). He plays a dorky Egyptologist tapped as translator for a military mission, led by hard-nosed Russell, to investigate an ancient civilization in another galaxy.

Spader's previous pictures, even Wolf, have been grounded in reality, and his performances marked by subtlety. Still, he says he wasn't put off by StarGate's emphasis on special effects.

"Roland likes to shoot things happening around you," Spader says. "Today, it seems like an awful lot can be done in films in post-production . . . I think the opportunity is waning of doing a film on a huge scale where it's all there when you're actually making it."

The bulk of the shooting took place in the desert around Yuma, Ariz. Spader flew back to Los Angeles every weekend to see his wife, Victoria, and two sons, now 5 and 2.

Career inattention, he says, "may come from the fact that my career is not the dominating thing in our life." More important is family in Massachusetts, where he owns the house next door to his parents.

"It is absolutely paramount to me that my kids grow up around their family," he says, "so I protect that pretty dearly."

© Kathryn Baker, 28 October 1994, USA Today (Thank you, Susan!)