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).

Notable film roles include in 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 pledged the Theta Delta Chi fraternity and was a member of the student theatre group Dramashop, acting in and directing a number of plays.

[20] 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).

[21] 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.

[22] Woods rose to prominence playing the husband of Meryl Streep in the critically acclaimed four episode miniseries Holocaust (1978) which aired on NBC.

[25] At the start of the 1980s, Woods played an eccentric and unpredictable janitor in the Peter Yates directed thriller Eyewitness (1981) co-starring Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, Morgan Freeman and Christopher Plummer.

Critic Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised the film and the leading performance writing, "By far Mr. Cronenberg's most inspired touch is the casting of Mr. Woods, who brings an almost backhanded heroism to the horror genre.

And his jittery, insinuating manner even begins to look like a kind of innocence, in comparison with the calm, soothing attitudes of the video-crazed megalomaniacs he's up against.

"[29] He then took on the role of Maximillian "Max" Bercovicz, a Jewish gangster, in Sergio Leone's epic Once Upon a Time in America (1984) alongside Robert De Niro, Tuesday Weld, and Joe Pesci.

[31] Rotten Tomatoes reports an 86% approval rating with 51 reviews, the consensus reading, "Sergio Leone's epic crime drama is visually stunning, stylistically bold, and emotionally haunting, and filled with great performances from the likes of Robert De Niro and James Woods.

Despite his criticism that ""Salvador" is long and disjointed and tries to tell too many stories," Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, "This is the sort of role Woods was born to play".

[34] In 1987, Woods won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for his role as a disabled man in the made-for-television film Promise (1986).

While the film received mixed reviews Woods' was praised for his performance with Critic Roger Ebert declaring that it was "one of the most convincing and horrifying portraits of drug addiction I've ever seen".

"[39] Woods was offered a leading role in Quentin Tarantino's directorial debut, the low-budget film Reservoir Dogs (1992), but his agent rejected the script without showing it to the actor.

"[46] The film was well received by critics, earning a positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes with the consensus reading, "Impressive ambition and bravura performances from an outstanding cast help Casino pay off in spite of a familiar narrative that may strike some viewers as a safe bet for director Martin Scorsese.

Janet Maslin, in her New York Times review, states, "Woods's performance as the hateful old reprobate Beckwith is the film's chief sign of life".

Woods appeared in Sofia Coppola's directorial debut The Virgin Suicides (1999) alongside Kirsten Dunst, Josh Hartnett and Kathleen Turner.

He played an infamous defense lawyer who, after growing disillusioned when his client commits a murder, becomes a successful prosecutor with the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office.

[59] In 2013, Woods joined Showtime's critically acclaimed series Ray Donovan in a recurring role as Patrick "Sully" Sullivan also starring Liev Schreiber, and Jon Voight.

[74] On December 14, 2015, while he was driving alone westbound through an ice storm on Interstate 70 in Glenwood Canyon, Colorado, a speeding driver lost control and crashed into five other cars.

Woods swerved his Jeep Grand Cherokee to avoid the accident and collided with a retaining wall, but slid backwards into a guard rail 100 feet (30 meters) above the Colorado River.

[89] Woods unsuccessfully sought to obtain the name of the Twitter user; the Los Angeles Superior Court denied his motion for discovery in October 2015, holding that he could not "use legal process to pierce the anonymity of internet speakers unless [he] can make a prima facie case."

"[93] In 2017, shortly before the Abe List litigation was resolved, Portia Boulger sued Woods for misidentifying her as a Nazi in an allegedly libelous tweet.

"[107] Woods has frequently expressed his conservative political views on Twitter and has been locked out of his account multiple times for violations of the platform's terms of service.

[114][115] In 2022, analysis conducted by researchers with the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public and the Krebs Stamos Group found Woods was the top purveyor of election misinformation on Twitter during the late months of 2020.

Journalist Matt Taibbi reported that the Democratic National Committee requested a tweet made by Woods, related to Hunter Biden, be removed from Twitter.

[131] Woods' career spans five decades and includes collaborations with some of the most acclaimed filmmakers of his time, such as John Carpenter, Elia Kazan, Martin Scorsese, David Cronenberg, Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood, Sydney Pollack, Arthur Penn, Oliver Stone, Rob Reiner, Robert Zemeckis, Richard Attenborough, and Sofia Coppola.

Selected credits: For his work in film, Woods has received two Academy Award nominations for his performances in Oliver Stone's Salvador (1987), and Rob Reiner's Ghosts of Mississippi (1996).