What went wrong with James Spader?

Question: What went wrong with James Spader?

With him, personally?

Any number of things, as he has stated in several interviews that he suffers from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. That has probably made working with him in films difficult for other performers and that may have limited his career more than it would have been. At least he’s been open and honest about those issues.

The major “problems” for Spader seem to have been:

1′ Lack of box office success – Following Stargate in 1994, Spader’s star was on the ascendance and he could have worked on any number of projects. Unfortunately for him, none of the projects that he worked on made money, especially with him as the lead, and he was “forced” onto television by the early 2000s where he’s largely remained for the last two decades.

2. Poor choices of roles – Films like Supernova, Critical Care, and The Watcher were relatively high profile, but a casual observation of them indicates that they weren’t very good films. Although Spader didn’t direct them (Or in the case of The Watcher wasn’t the lead) he received a great deal of blowback when they failed.

James Spader could have been an A-list performer in the late 1990s and the 2000s as he did have some appeal to moviegoers, he can act, and he was a handsome man when he was younger. Unfortunately for Spader he seems to have received some poor career advice and by 2002 he’d squandered much of the momentum that he received from Stargate and was “reduced” to character actor and television roles.