What are your thoughts on James Woods as an actor?

His politics don't bother me as far as what I know for him- he's just a right wing conservative nothing fanatical afaik.

As an actor I might surprise some people on here but I find him underrated and overrated at the same time.

He has serious problems playing normal characters - so much so, he rarely played normal characters at all. He was mentioned in the Best Actors Across All Three Mediums thread for this and how he did it to himself and pinned himself into a corner.

He doesn't have many "Immediate Family" type films because he's not good in "Immediate Famiily" roles and he isn't good enough to keep trying it - and then he cultivated his particular side niche so well he locked himself out of other roles..........on the other hand he cultivated that side of his work so well that he was legit great at scuzzballs, weirdoes, sickos. Really great at it.......which made the parts he wasn't so good at look worse.

He's also a small time actor imo - his best work is on TV (some of it really brilliant, including beating out Robert Duvall in Lonesome Dove for an Emmy - a flat out stunner when Woods had just won already before recently anyway!) .........but in the movies well I'll tell you he didn't deserve those parts in the overrated OUATIA and the overrated Casino and it's no coincidence that he's not that good in them either opposite De Niro who is not just in an entirely different league as an actor obviously but also as a movie actor specifically.

He's a complicated guy to assess.....

A skeezy piece of shit who's very talented at playing skeezy pieces of shit. He's tremendous in The Onion Field and Salvador.

Never thought much of him until last year when I started a streak, got lost in the Woods and since have watched around 25 of his movies. Now I'm a big fan. Still haven't got to Ghosts of Mississippi, Holocaust, Cohn, etc! To me he's extremely watchable - often has the tense presence of a laser, and often brings an edgy energy to the screen. He's an underrated comedic actor and even when he's not acing nastiness in his villain roles he can be quite slick in more generic parts too.

The Onion Field probably his best, a sly livewire of a perf. Also think he's really outstanding in Promise (1986), a perf that choked me up a few times, wouldn't think he'd be so great. That one comes smack in the middle of '84-88 which might be his all-around peak period. OUATIA (cast standout, there's fire in those glares and he practically wipes De Niro off the screen), Cat's Eye (trivial part but suggests he'd work in an anxious Woody Allen esque role), Salvador, Best Seller, Cop - dynamic lead perfs, he fills out scenes and matches/sharpens the tone of these pics. 

Could name many more perfs I like, but I will admit he seems to have lost the touch somewhere around the late 90s early 00s. He can still be pretty good (True Crime, Ray Donovan) but these are small, small roles and unfortunately doesn't look like he has much left to offer....

Hmmm. Quick thought. Dropping out of the Bitter Moon lead (he was cast!!) was a huge mistake. He would've been pretty great there I think and might've upped his career to some other fascinating, risky lead roles.... instead of safer parts, bit parts, and goofy parts (though he's likable/funny in stuff like Next Door and Diggstown). I can kinda picture him in a Woody Allen, a Mamet, etc. What might've been if he was a Democrat! I'm kiddddding (?)

Woods to me took on DeNiro at the peak of his capability in the gangster genre that defined him in Once Upon A Time In America and at the very least matched DeNiro step for step. To some, he even have been better than peak Bob, in one of his best performances. But this was 1984. I truly believe you could have slipped Woods into a lot of James Caan's roles, and he'd have been as good or better. I can see Woods as an even more dangerous Sonny Corleone in The Godfather. 

He unfortunately broke through in the wrong decade. He does not work as a conventional leading man. By the time his career started popping in the 80's, he was trying to play a lot of would be conventional lead roles, when those films that required off-kilter or unconventional leads in the 70's were being made with far less frequency. It was trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, and didn't allow him to maximise his ability. So he only started shining infrequently in strong character parts (Casino, Ghosts Of Mississippi) before settling as an all-purpose character actor across film, TV and voice-overs.

This is actually a good description of Woods as a leading man. He could play leading roles, but they were often in more prestigey TV films / smaller movies. When he showed up in a major film production especially later on in his career, it was often more in scene stealing supporting roles, like as H.R. Haldeman in Nixon, or Contact. 

I think Woods was a bit too sleazy sounding (in real life he also turned into a sleaze, but that's aside the point), and frenetic to ever truly be a leading man, but he did have his moments of brilliance. I think of something like Salvador, he carries that movie so much, providing the lead photographic with a lot of guilt, or Vampires where he makes for a great anti-hero. I think the sleaziness of his voice is also why he's done a lot of voice acting too, especially these days, because it fits that "animated villain" vibe so much. Think of something like Hades in Hercules, he practically steals that movie, and you don't ever see his face, only his voice. It also helps that you can tell he's having a great time in that role. 

It's a shame that most people will know him for his politics(because nobody is right wing in Hollywood except him and jon voight) than for his grossly underrated acting career