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Personal Quote
"All I wanted when I came on the show was a good body count and a good death. That's all."
"I patterned the accent after this guy I was in a play with, but that was three years ago. Now I'm listening to Tony Head (Giles in Buffy), who sounds kind of like Spike in real life. It's much more tough-guy talk in real life. His accent (as Giles) is just as fake as mine. His is nice and gritty, but it's not North London. I'm always afraid that I'm morphing over into Tony Head, wherever he's from." - on his british accent in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
"It's just me and a guitar, so I'm not going to be doing a lot of Smashing Pumpkins. I do Tom Waits, Neil Young, Bob Dylan. That's all the good stuff, man. That's when they had good songs written for just voice and guitar. I wish I could do Johnny Lee Hooker, but I'm not that good." - on his acoustic performance at 14 Below, Santa Monica on 29th August 2000.
"All I really wanted was a spectacular death. A good quip and a chance to kick butt."
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James Wesley Marsters was born August 20th, and is originally from Greenville, California, but grew up in Modesto. His father used to be a minister, and his mother -- a social worker -- almost became a nun. He has one brother and one sister, and his parents are now divorced, leaving him with at least one step-sibling as well. He graduated from Davis High School in Modesto and studied at Juilliard, the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts, and the American Conservatory Theatre. While doing regional theatre in Chicago, he co-founded the New Mercury Theatre company (named after Orson Welles' "Mercury Theatre"). In 1990, New Mercury's founders packed the operation up and relocated to Seattle in the hopes of finding more opportunity; they played there for a number of years, using any available space, including the basements of restaurants and churches, but eventually found themselves a more permanent space near Pioneer Square. Acting on advice from fellow actors and seeing only meager future earnings on the stage, Marsters eventually departed to seek a more solid salary in Hollywood.
After landing several small guest starring roles on shows like Northern Exposure and Moloney, he landed the role of vampire Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That short-term guest role turned into a long-term contract, and James became a regular on the series in its fourth season. He also guest starred on Millennium on FOX and had a role in the 1999 horror film The House On Haunted Hill. In 1998, he filmed a only single episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but kept himself busy with a fairly large role in an independent film called Winding Roads. He is currently a regular on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and spends much of his time off the Buffy set doing convention appearances around the world and filming guest-starring roles for other series.
When he's not on-camera, he works on his car, drives in the desert, paints, and writes. He also plays guitar and sings on-stage at the Santa Monica nightclub 14 Below. Marsters lives in the greater Los Angeles area and is currently single.
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