Spader began acting in youth-oriented films such as Tuff Turf, The New Kids (both 1985), Pretty in Pink (1986), and Mannequin (1987).

His breakthrough role came with the Steven Soderbergh drama Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), for which he received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor.

He then starred in films such as White Palace (1990), True Colors (1991), Stargate (1994), 2 Days in the Valley (1996), and Secretary (2002).

His television roles include the attorney Alan Shore in the last season of The Practice (2003–2004) and its spin-off Boston Legal (2004–2008), which earned him three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.

[4][5] Spader is a sixth-generation descendant of Connecticut politician Seth P. Beers;[6] co-founder of American School for the Deaf.

[8][2] While studying to become a full-time actor, Spader undertook jobs including bartending, teaching yoga, driving a meat truck, loading railroad cars, and being a stable boy.

Supporting roles in films such as Baby Boom (1987) and Wall Street (1987) followed until his breakthrough in Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), in which he played a sexual voyeur who complicates the lives of three Baton Rouge, Louisiana residents.

In 1996, he played car accident fetishist James Ballard in the controversial Canadian film Crash and assassin Lee Woods in 2 Days in the Valley.

During a TV Game Changers interview Kelley noted, "People will watch him (Spader) in the movies, but they will never let him in their own home.

[13] He starred in Race, a play written and directed by David Mamet, which opened on December 6, 2009, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway.

[18] Spader met his first wife, decorator Victoria Kheel, while working in a yoga studio after he moved to New York City in the 1980s.