He is credited in over 70 television and film productions, and performed with actors such as Robby Benson, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Garner, Charlton Heston, George C. Scott, Martin Sheen, and Johnny Depp.

Casting director Fred Roos had cast Spradlin in television shows such as I Spy (as the immediate superior of Pentagon spies Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott in the episode "Tonia"), Mannix (in an uncredited role as Senator Sid Abernathy in the episode "Turn Every Stone"), and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.

He worked with Jack Webb on the series Dragnet, playing multiple roles from a safecracker, a pushy conventioneer caught up in a gambling sting, and a low-level con man.

Spradlin portrayed Commander Maurice E. "Germany" Curts, Communications Officer, U.S. Pacific Fleet, in an uncredited role in Tora!

His film credits included One on One (1977) as an authoritarian basketball coach described by Roger Ebert as "a hard-nosed ace recruiter with a heart of Drano" and Apocalypse Now as General Corman, the somber officer who assigns Martin Sheen's character to the search mission.

In 1985, Spradlin portrayed President Lyndon B. Johnson in the mini-series Robert Kennedy and His Times, based on the book of the same name by presidential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

In 1989, Spradlin played a small role in the film The War of the Roses as a divorce lawyer, with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.

[1] Although lending his likeness, he did not reprise his role as Pat Geary (whose in-game was voiced by Chris Edgerly) in Electronic Arts' video game adaptation of The Godfather Part II in 2009.