James Spader explains why he's so good at playing so strange

James Spader embraces the title "the strangest man on TV," he tells Playboy in the September issue interview, out Friday:
I had no problem with it. I’m a great fan of all things strange, eccentric and idiosyncratic.  Things never get strange enough for me.
In fact, for Spader, strange has been good: More than 40 films and three popular TV series since 1983, including the return (Sept. 22) of the breakout NBC hit The Blacklist and the coming (2015) The Avengers: The Age of Ultron, have resulted in heaping helpings of weirdness on his resume.

Spader says TV series work is hard but he's having a great time on The Blacklist, which he calls "this strange amalgamation of a serial and a procedural." The show is about a fedora wearing, ex-most-wanted fugitive who helps the FBI neutralize terrorists under strange conditions.

Still, he has time to play Ultron in the next Avengers, though he was a little worried when he took the role, he told Playboy:
I told them, "I’m very conscious that how your character enters this universe is very important. You’re not going to enter twice, so I want to make sure it’s the best entrance." They said, "The title of the movie is Avengers: Age of Ultron.  You’re Ultron.  That’s the best entrance anyone can have."
Another thing Spader is good at is talking about his career and past (maybe too much), as he also demonstrates in the Playboyinterview:

How did his attitudes towards sex develop?

“Our house was very progressive and very liberal.  The bathroom doors were always left open, and half the time my mother would come out of the living room half-naked to make some announcement. ... I don’t know a time when sexuality wasn’t the prism through which I saw the world.  At an extremely early age I was always the first one to say, ‘Let’s play doctor,’ with every female neighbor.”

What about his sexual fantasies?

"When I was young, a lot of my sexual fantasies were about older women.  If I knew then what I know now, I would’ve had many more encounters when I was a kid delivering groceries. Some of those wives would answer the door in their nightgowns in the middle of the day. I wasn’t shy, obviously, just not wise enough. I was an idiot.”

Do his roles reflect his true self?

“I think in some of my earlier work I was sort of hiding, and that’s why I played so many bad guys.  I liked being hired to play somebody who was so different from me. If you’re not actually a bad guy, just the fact that you’re comfortable with certain things — such as, say, sexuality — means you can tap into things that others can’t.”

Does he have obsessive-compulsive tendencies? Oh, yeah.

“I’m ritualistic and habitual.  I have an addictive personality. I love cooking, which I’ve done since I was a kid. That’s very methodical. It requires focus and yet allows for extrapolation or improvisation and spontaneity. It’s also calming for me. I don’t sleep particularly well. If I wake up at night, everything inside turns on instantly and won’t stop. There’s a compulsion to address things. I just can’t let them fester or get pushed under the rug. I have to tie it up tightly in a box, throw it right out the ... window into a river and let it sink to the bottom.”