The descendent of a long line of teachers and professors, Bostonian James Spader interrupted his formal education to study acting at the Michael Chekhov school. In the fallow periods between such acting assignments as the 1981 film Endless Love and the 1983 TV series Family Tree, Spader kept alive with a dizzying variety of "civilian" jobs, including yoga teacher. After 1985, his movie assignments increased in frequency. The apotheosis of Spader's many small-time creep and spoiled-brat roles was his award-winning performance as the enigmatic video freak in sex, lies, and videotape (1989). Having played so many nasty yuppies in the past (few nastier than the slimy lawyer in 1987's Wall Street), it must have been refreshing for Spader to play a reasonably nice, albeit emotionally scrambled, young urban professional in White Palace (1990). Thus far the biggest moneymaker with which Spader has been associated is the sci-fi spectacular Stargate (1994), in which he portrays a likeably nerdish Egyptologist who is given a chance to prove his historical theories first-hand. When asked about his movie career, James Spader has allowed that he enjoys working in all his films -- as long as he doesn't have to see any of them.