James Woods: Out of the Woods?

Though Woods won't say for the record exactly who he's bitching and moaning about, it isn't tough to smoke out the mystery offender. "A particular person sat down and decided that she was going to get millions of dollars out of me any way she could," he continues, raging with anger. "This became a mounted military campaign. I won't say who, but her life has only been about this for several years." I figure, scratch Heather Graham. "If you look at the rest of my life," he continues, "you've never seen me in drug rehab, I've never been arrested, never had complaints about me. Nothing. One person decided, 'I'm going to land this mine and dig as deep as I can.' And if you look at the facts, they're staggering. Staggering. The lawyer who stopped them said, 'Check the background, the credibility, the motive of the person involved.' And they did."

When I ask him point blank about the controversial People story, his energy revs into overdrive, as his speech turns voluminous. "Kathy Bates called [the magazine] and said, 'Does no one want to talk about the fact that this guy is still my friend, that we work together all the time and I've loved him forever?' I told her, 'They're not going to listen to you. They're a bunch of lying cock-suckers.' Gerry Spence, the lawyer who's never lost a case in his life, said, 'I will bring them to their knees. Sue these people and I simply guarantee unequivocally you will be a multimillionaire.' I said, 'If I do it and have these pieces of shit in my life for five years, it's not worth it.' Anyway, who cares? I wipe my ass with People magazine.

"I am not referring to Sean Young," he volunteers, eliminating the only other possibility I had in mind besides his ex-wife Owen. "But this person, by court order, can never talk to me, come near me, doesn't have a dime from me--goodbye. I'm not saying who it is, I'm only commenting. And, if you draw any conclusions, make sure you make it very clear they're your conclusions. That person I totally and utterly defeated. I never get involved with toxic people anymore. Woe to the man or woman who thinks that the capacity to kill is not lurking behind these civilized eyes. Because it definitely is. I've paid my dues for three lifetimes."

It seems the right moment to ask Woods how he would react if he learned that Sean Young was to be the co-star of one of his upcoming assignments? "Sean Young is not a problem for me," he asserts. "I suggested Sean for a movie that I was doing. I think she's a wonderful actress, a beautiful woman, very aware. And she has made clear to me through intermediaries and vice versa that we both know what the problem was, that the whole scheme was perpetrated on both of us by someone else--who will remain nameless. We were both victims, played off against each other, in a public forum, for profit. Period. That's the way we both perceive it. If it's true or not, I don't know. But I think we were both dumb. We both took the bait.

"This is a seven-year-old issue, so I get a little bored talking about it," he says, not entirely convincingly. "But let me make it clear: there's not a part of my life that doesn't have a positive welcome mat for Sean, artistically. We'll probably never be friends because I don't think she would choose to be. I don't know what her feelings are--probably not as positive as mine. Maybe they are."

For those of you who can't wait to hear Woods talk about his new movies, skip ahead. I'm having too good a time hearing him on more personal stuff--like when he tells me that he has temporarily sworn off romance, the better to focus on keeping going his career comeback. "I'm single," he says. "It's a bummer. I haven't been seriously involved with anybody for two or three years. And nothing against actresses, but it's not a good idea for me to get involved with an actress. I'm almost afraid to tell you this because I know you just want to trash me. My publicist said, 'They're going to trash you in this interview,' and I said, 'So what? It'll be fun.' Anyway, here's my life: up at six- thirty. The days I don't have stuff to do, I play golf, which is like the Zen experience of all life. I go to my physical therapist, because I've got a bad back. I go home. I work, I talk to the architect who's building my house. Maybe on a Saturday night I'll go out with a woman friend or double date. I have a frighteningly conventional life."

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