James Woods has made a career of playing some of the more offbeat characters in recent films. He was the sociopathic killer in The Onion Field, the doomed German-Jewish artist in Holocaust, the freaked-out Vietnam veteran in Eyewitness and will be the cult deprogrammer in the forthcoming Captured. Some critics say Woods, 34, is the new De Niro, the new Pacino--an intense actor capable of playing an enormous variety of roles, each one of them different, each one complete. To find out more about him, we sent out interviewer Claudia Dreifus. "Jimmy Woods is fast-talking, glib and smart," Dreifus reports. "He's one man who is really clear on who he is and what he does."

Q 1

PLAYBOY: In most of your films, you've played either a victim, a sociopath or a loser. Does being typed in this way bother you?

James Woods: No. Has the man in the gray flannel suit ever interested anybody? There aren't very many interesting straight-down-the-line sort of people. Robert Redford is about the only one who's been able to capitalize on being Mr. Straight. But he's a much underrated actor; he does much more interesting things than he's given credit for. Look at Ordinary People. His characters are the most disoriented bunch of people I've ever seen. When I began trying to get into movies and television, I used to bitch and moan that conventionally good-looking guys had everything going for them. If we all went for a Rockford Files part, one of them would most likely get it because he looked like Robert Wagner and I didn't. But some of these guys who got the parts and who were also my friends would say to me, "Jimmy, eventually you'll end up getting the De Niro parts and we never will." They knew that it wouldn't be very interesting to watch an Arrow-shirt man in Raging Bull.

Q 2

PLAYBOY: Of all the sociopaths and misfits you've played, which one taught you the most?

James Woods: The cop killer I played in The Onion Field. I was really horrified to find out he had no sense of right or wrong.

When I first began the movie, I thought, I'll find some way to make this guy real sensitive and have him exonerate himself in a grander human or spiritual or moral universe. That way, he'll turn out not to have been such a horrible human being. When we finished shooting, what I had done felt very cold and disgusting, and I realized that there is a kind of person who is truly sociopathic. I had to come to grips with that; to find out what it's like not to think about whether other people lived or died--so long as they served my purposes. It's quite chilling to know that I could--that we all could, under the right circumstances--operate on that level.

Q 3

PLAYBOY: Isn't there always a sense of the outlaw in your work?

James Woods: : Maybe there's something to that. Nietzsche had a theory that the law was invented by the weak to keep the strong at bay. I'd like to amend that a bit. I think that maybe the outlaw was invented by the slightly more sensitive people to keep the weight of the so-called Beautiful People at bay long enough to keep themselves breathing in their own world. I've always felt that outcasts have a certain purity that other people don't. Outcasts don't have to live up to any standards--they define their own.

Q 4

PLAYBOY: You played Karl Weiss, the neurotic and doomed artist in Holocaust. How would you feel if you were hit by a truck tomorrow and Holocaust were the thing that you were most remembered for?

James Woods: I feel OK about Holocaust. But I wouldn't want it to be the epitaph on my tombstone. While we were shooting it, Meryl Streep and I concluded that we were committing the second greatest crime of the 20th Century: We were convinced we would probably all go to hell for doing this piece of shit and besmirching the memory of millions of victims of the Holocaust. As it turned out, we were unfair to the program and to ourselves; that series meant a lot to people. I felt good about what I did. I liked showing a supposedly weak man who, in fact, was just a sensitive man--and who fought back in his own way and who was willing to give his life for what he believed in. I like to show people who go beyond their capabilities and become heroic in some small way. I want everybody who sits in the audience to think: You know, at one point in my life, I'll do some small gesture like that and it will make me just a little bit better than I thought I was.

Q 5

PLAYBOY: What qualities do you think producers see in you?

James Woods: Producers don't see anything in me. Producers hate me, OK? Producers are assholes. How's that for a quote? They're schmucks; they're deal makers. They know all the tricks of the trade but they don't know the trade itself. Producers know how to steal money and they know how to put together packages. So what relevance would someone like me have in their lives? They don't give a shit about the kind of thing that I do. My only stock in trade--my one strong suit, in all objective modesty--is that I feel I'm one of the most talented people of my generation in film. I may not be the most charismatic. I may not be the most successful. I'm not a pretty boy. When they want one of those, they call Richard Gere. But if the role requires that the actor be great or it's going to be a disastrous picture, they call me. As for most producers, they're liars and thieves. They have no value in life. They don't believe in anything.