James Howard Woods (born April 18, 1947) is an American actor. Known for fast-talking, intense roles on screen and stage, he has received numerous accolades, including three Emmy Awards, and a Golden Globe Award, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. He started his career in minor roles on and off-Broadway before making his Broadway debut in The Penny Wars (1969), followed by Borstal Boy (1970), The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1971) and Moonchildren (1972). Woods' early film roles include The Visitors (1972), The Way We Were (1973) and Night Moves (1975). He starred in the NBC miniseries Holocaust (1978) opposite Meryl Streep.

He rose to prominence portraying Gregory Powell in The Onion Field (1979). He earned two Academy Awards nominations: one for Best Actor for his role as journalist Richard Boyle in Salvador (1986) and for Best Supporting Actor for playing white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith in Ghosts of Mississippi (1996). Notable film roles include Videodrome (1983), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), The Hard Way (1991), Chaplin (1992), Nixon (1995), Casino (1995), Contact (1997), Vampires (1998), Another Day in Paradise (1998), Any Given Sunday (1999), and The Virgin Suicides (1999). He served as an executive producer on Christopher Nolan's biographical drama film Oppenheimer (2023).

For his television roles, he is the recipient of two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for portraying as D.J. in the CBS movie Promise (1987) and Bill W. in the ABC film My Name Is Bill W. (1989). He has also played Roy Cohn in Citizen Cohn (1992) and Dick Fuld in Too Big to Fail (2011). He starred in the CBS legal series Shark (2006–2008), and had a recurring role in the Showtime crime series Ray Donovan (2013). He has voiced roles for Hercules (1997), Recess: School's Out (2001), Stuart Little 2 (2002) and Surf's Up (2007), as well as voicing himself once in The Simpsons (1993), and several times in Family Guy (2005–2016).

Woods was born on April 18, 1947, in Vernal, Utah, and had a brother ten years younger. His father, Gail Peyton Woods, was a United States Army intelligence officer who died in 1960 after routine surgery. His mother, Martha A. (née Smith), ran a pre-school after her husband's death and later married Thomas E. Dixon. Woods grew up in Warwick, Rhode Island, where he attended Pilgrim High School, from which he graduated in 1965. He is of part Irish descent and was raised Catholic, briefly serving as an altar boy.

Woods was an undergraduate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He stated on Inside the Actors Studio that he originally intended to become an eye surgeon. He pledged the Theta Delta Chi fraternity and was a member of the student theatre group Dramashop, acting in and directing a number of plays. He dropped out of MIT in 1969, one semester before graduating, to pursue an acting career.

Woods has said that he owes his acting career to Tim Affleck, father of actors Ben and Casey Affleck. The senior Affleck was a stage manager at the Theatre Company of Boston, which Woods attended as a student.

Woods appeared in 36 plays before making his Broadway debut in the 1969 play The Penny Wars. The following year he acted in the first American production of Frank McMahon's adaptation of Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy (1970) at the Lyceum Theatre. He got the part by pretending he was British. He returned to Broadway the following year to portray David Darst in Daniel Berrigan's The Trial of the Catonsville Nine also at the Lyceum Theatre. In 1971, he played Bob Rettie in the American premiere of Michael Weller's Moonchildren at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. The following year the production moved to Broadway at the Royale Theatre where Woods starred alongside Edward Herrmann and Christopher Guest. In 1972, Woods won a Theatre World Award for his performance. He returned to Broadway in 1973 to portray Steven Cooper in the original production of Jean Kerr's Finishing Touches at the Plymouth Theatre.

Woods has garnered a reputation as a prominent Hollywood character actor, having appeared in over 130 films and television series. By the early 1970s, he was getting small movie roles including his feature film debut in Elia Kazan's The Visitors which debuted at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. That same year he acted in the neo-noir crime film Hickey & Boggs (1972) starring Robert Culp and Bill Cosby. The following year he had a supporting turn as Barbra Streisand's college boyfriend before she meets Robert Redford in the Sydney Pollack directed romance drama The Way We Were (1973). He continued to act in films such as the crime drama The Gambler (1974) starring James Caan, the neo-noir Night Moves (1975) with Gene Hackman and the comedy Alex & the Gypsy (1976) with Jack Lemmon. He acted in the Robert Aldrich directed comedy-drama The Choirboys (1977) alongside Charles Durning, Louis Gossett Jr., Randy Quaid and Burt Young.