The current James Spader -- I think I saw the current one, the one after The Blacklist ended -- had a bit of nip and tuck done, so he's not aging so naturally. When you're older, if you lose weight, the skin sort of sags. His got amazingly taut. He still had a bit of that double-chin, but he always did.
I stand by my last line, above. He's not the only actor to become a parody of himself. A lot of them, as they age, I guess they get tired. They have a well-worn bag of tricks that they go through with each scene, pulling out the bits that seem to fit. They become "personalities."
William Holden used to say that anyone that an impressionist could mimic was a personality, not an actor. James Spader could not be imitated when he was young. He could, now. Reddington was sort of a riff on Alan Shore, who started out as fascinating, then ended up like a bad portrayal of Dorian Gray. By now he's probably typecast and will always play snooty, amoral characters. I hope not, because once you've seen the act -- repeated endlessly -- it just gets boring. Or got boring for me. When Alan Shore breezed into The Practice, he was a breath of fresh air! By the second season of Boston Legal, he was stale and predictable. Reddington's character was predictable early on. And, golly! Could he possibly be whatername's father? Why, you could knock me over with a girder!
That's why I watch British detective series. Only the lesser actors are predictable. And the series are better written.
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punkrockgirl (1270)
6 months ago
You said "the end" as if he quit acting or his career ended years ago. As for the nip and tuck, that's hardly any major work. My point still stands and you just further proved it. People waste their time criticizing the looks of old people whether they had work done or not.
I'll be honest, I haven't seen Spader in much, but as far as I know he seems pretty versatile. I haven't seen him in any recent roles, so I don't know what he's like now. Nearly all actors have a certain style that never really goes away, but it works. It'll be up to the viewer if they like that style or not. Fans of the show know that he clearly has a method he's sticking with and they enjoy it, so I guess that's what matters. I know I read that he has a type of memory where he literally reads pages of scripts and sees this in his head, so it's essentially like he's reading his lines out loud but not actually reading them. Maybe it comes across on screen sometimes
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