 James Marsters played the English vampire Spike though he’s actually Californian. He was born in the northern logging town of Greenville, California, and raised in Modesto, California. Date of birth: Unknown Appeared in: School Hard, Halloween, Lie to Me, What's My Line? (Part 1), What's My Line? (Part 2), Surprise, Innocence, Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, Passion, I Only Have Eyes For You, Becoming (Part 1), Becoming (Part 2), Lover's Walk, The Harsh Light of Day, Wild at Heart, The Initiative, Pangs, Something Blue, Hush, Doomed, A New Man, The I in Team, Goodbye, Iowa, This Year's Girl, Who Are You?, Superstar, Where the Wild Things Are, New Moon Rising, The Yoko Factor, Primeval, Restless, then every episode in season five (except The Body), season six and season seven. |
| Related Trivia: | |
| Resources: | › IMDB filmography › Chance |
| Suggested by: | › Jess |
| Added: | › 25th August 2004 |
| Updated: | › 9th April, 2006 |
| Hits: | › 4908 |
August 5th, 2005 at 12:22 pm
How can there be no comments on here??? We should at least be discussing his all over sexiness!!!
August 5th, 2005 at 12:25 pm
Maybe some people just don’t feel that way about him. I know I don’t.
August 5th, 2005 at 12:28 pm
How is that possible????? He’s gorgeous
(Proud owner of 14 Spike Posters)
August 5th, 2005 at 12:36 pm
Not my type - if everyone had the same tastes the world would be a very boring place indeed.
(Proud owner of a Spike dartboard)
August 5th, 2005 at 1:12 pm
I do think that James Marsters is very good looking and he has a gorgeous smile but I am an Angel girl through and through.
And you all may think me weird for this but I think that David is at his sexiest when he is playing Angelus.
August 9th, 2005 at 1:53 am
I think he is goregous too, but everyone’s got their opinion.
November 8th, 2005 at 3:42 am
I also really, really love the fact that in an interview (can’t remember which one), Marsters said that there will always be a very special place in his heart where Buffy and Spike live. He said it was not difficult at all for him to cry at the end of “The Gift” because he lived and breathed that character and relationship. Just love James - really cool guy.
November 13th, 2005 at 2:15 am
You know whats funny? I’m starting to watch Smallville (simply for him) and it’s funny to hear him without an English accent. At times it almost sounds like he is an English man using a bad American accent!
November 15th, 2005 at 2:26 am
I watched his movie, Cool Money, and he obviously didn’t have an English accent and he had a buzz-cut type haircut. I was distrought (spelling??) but it got a little better at the end because he won his court case (as his own lawyer) and every one else went to jail. But James, he’s too smart. Either as Spike or Bobby something-or-other. Mainly as Spike.
November 17th, 2005 at 7:38 pm
I’ve been watching DVD’s of Millennium, one of my favorite shows from a while back. It’s a Chris Carter show (X-Files), and I watched an episode with James Marsters last night. So Awesome. Then, about two episodes later, Juliet Landau.
Nice.
December 30th, 2005 at 11:06 pm
yeah that is a beautiful scene. and also the other one mentioned when buffy goes to see spike as the buffbot and he’s all beat up. It’s so sweet coz Buffy clearly expected him to have spilled all about Dawn to Glory but he didn’t say a word even though she almost killed him… awwww and then she kisses him… it’s SO gorgeous!
December 30th, 2005 at 11:33 pm
I keep watching Touched just for that one scene with Spike and Buffy at the end. And his speech about why he loves Buffy. And in Showtime (I think) at th end when Buffy comes to rescue him and he thinks she’s the First but then she takes off his chains and he smiles cause he was right, she did save him.
December 30th, 2005 at 11:36 pm
Aw yeah that one is also beautiful… when she rescues him and he’s all beat up (again!)… aww….
Is it just me or is Spike even sexier when he’s had his ass kicked?!
December 30th, 2005 at 11:44 pm
Not just you … we’re horrible, aren’t we? Maybe all buffy fans are at least a little psychotic. Either that or it’s just us.
December 30th, 2005 at 11:46 pm
MagicBone (wicked name by the way), I’m glad it’s not just me, and hell, I’m proud to be a little psychotic!!
Amen Amen and so say all of us.
December 30th, 2005 at 11:54 pm
ok one word for spike…themostgorgeousguyintvhistory
now believe it or not thats in the English dictionary ;)
December 30th, 2005 at 11:56 pm
That’s my new favorite word.
December 30th, 2005 at 11:57 pm
Mine too !!
December 31st, 2005 at 12:04 am
(wipes away drool) Oh yeah, me too.
February 24th, 2006 at 12:52 am
I am from Modesto, where James grew up. So ha.
February 24th, 2006 at 1:15 am
I am sorry, I don’t mean to rub it in that I live where James grew up AND that I met him AND that I hugged his strong and mysterious and sort of compact but well-muscled body.
Oh. Wait. That sounds like rubbing. I didn’t mean to be rubbing. From now on I’ll be rub free.
February 24th, 2006 at 2:40 am
Wow you touced a Buffy star? I am forever in awe of your greatness.
February 24th, 2006 at 4:04 am
And James Marsters? Ooooh. You are my Buffy-hero. (see above, re: drool wipe)
May 29th, 2006 at 4:29 am
Does anyone know what year James was born in? Cause I’m suddenly finding out all at once that a whole bunch of my favourite actors are much older than I thought they were, and since James definitely falls under my favourite actor category, I was hoping maybe someone could tell me which year he was born in?
May 29th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
I read in TV Guide two and a half years ago that he was forty-one (which is amazing, given that he convincingly plays a dude who is presumably in his twenties). I don’t know the exact year though.
May 29th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
According to imdb he was born on 20th August 1962.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0551346/
That makes him just 11 years younger than me… not too wide a gap is it? Hmmmmmm… the possibilities…
May 29th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
That’s so awesome. It reminds me of something else he said in an interview, I hunted it out:
“I’ve always envisioned [Spike] giving Buffy a garden that he could never go to in the daytime, to give her something alive for a change.”
Aaaw! I’m on the “We
May 29th, 2006 at 3:58 pm
Oops, that was meant to be I’m on the “We
May 29th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
Grr! I think I worked out what I was doing wrong, sorry Jess.
Anyway, it was meant to say I’m on the “We Love Spike” bandwagon and generally all for the Buffy/Spike love :-D
May 29th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
And so say all of us…..
May 29th, 2006 at 10:54 pm
I agree, Spike’s lovely. Why do they all hate him so much? And do we ever get a reason as to why they never kill him? (Not that I would want them to kill him or anything)
May 30th, 2006 at 6:22 am
I think there’s a couple of reasons but in the end it boils down to the “all vampires are BAD” prejudice. I don’t know if I can explain myself very well but I’ll try. The Scoobies have every reason to hate and distrust Spike through season 4 (despite the chip) because all he’s ever done is try to kill them. Even after they reluctantly help him, he betrays them to Adam. So yeah, understandably they’re not the best of pals.
BUT you’d think that when he helps them out again and again through seasons 5, and 6, the Scoobies would take a moment to re-consider their feelings on him, and figure “hey, for being a soulless demon, this guy is actually turning out to be a valuable ally” but noooo, they don’t. And I honestly think it’s because they’re stubbornly stuck with their black-and-white view that “no soul=eeevil”. Maybe that’s because they’re scarred by memories of Angel. He was the only vampire to really be close to the Scoobies and when he went evil, he did terrible things to them. But Spike (with the chip and no soul) doesn’t even come close to doing something as bad!! He even gets a soul of his own accord and it’s not good enough.
Whatever their reasons, overall the Scoobies are just too bloody narrow-minded to accept that Spike might have actually changed for the good, because it goes against everything they know and have learned about vampires. That’s my theory anyway. I’m getting all riled up now though so I think I should stop…
Season 2 - Buffy’s the only one strong enough to fight him but he always seems to get away. In the finale, they reach a truce
Season 3 - In Lovers Walk, Spike threatens Buffy with the safety of Willow and Xander, so again, she can’t kill him - and then he leaves Sunnydale anyway. Season 4 - chipped, defenceless, helps out
Season 5 - chipped, defenceless, helps out
Season 6 - chipped, defenceless, helps out
Season 7 - all souled up
May 30th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
While I liked what you wrote Wynter, I must disagree with you on this matter. The scoobies should not like Spike (pre-season 7 anyway) or trust him at all. It’s not that he’s a vampire, but rather that he has no soul. However one may look at it, he has absolutely no willingness or desire to do good (trying to get in Buffy’s pants doesn’t count as doing good, by the way), and he showed several times (turning on the group in ‘The Yoko Factor’, trying to kill Buffy when he thinks the chip is out in ‘Out of My Mind’, trying to kill the girl in the alley in ‘Smashed’, and trying to rape Buffy in ‘Seeing Red’ all come to mind). With no soul, Spike simply can’t do good, and the scoobies know very well what will happen if the chip is removed. They showed remarkable restraint in not staking him, actually (good that they didn’t, since the show just wouldn’t have been as good during the final two or three seasons).
May 30th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
By the way, I suppose that this whole discussion belongs on the Spike page, rather than the James Marsters page, but it is very interesting to consider this matter.
May 31st, 2006 at 12:22 am
TwoToGo-Grave, you’ve hit the nail on the head with the main issue being Spike’s lack of soul. I did mention that in my original post I think. But there’s a couple of things you said that I don’t agree with so I’m sorry, I’m going to keep arguing!
That’s not true! Look at all the good he did in season 5 when he aligned himself with Buffy. Granted it was because he was in love with her so maybe his morals weren’t all right, but he did it knowing that she’d never love him back. And the Buffy argument only stands until she dies. What about all the good he did after her death, patrolling with the Scoobies every night and looking after Dawn? He did all that without a soul. I would say that that’d be enough to cut him some slack but (and this really annoys me) the Scoobies STILL dislike him - hence my argument that despite the evidence, they’re just too stubborn to believe that a soulless vampire can be capable of good.
I don’t know, maybe I’m going off on a tangent. But I do genuinely believe Spike is capable of doing good of his own free will and he’s proved it plenty of times.
I think that’s me done…I actually have issues with the whole “rape” thing but I won’t get into that here because it’s an entirely different story.
May 31st, 2006 at 2:23 am
I’m part of the don’t trust Spike pre S7 crowd. I think of Spike with a chip sort of like an alcoholic without alcohol. He became a different person because he had a chip. He really wanted to be good and it was easy for him because of the chip. Put that bottle in front of him, (remove the chip) and I believe the soullessness would’ve won in the end. Conversely, I watched Forever today at lunch and was touched by Spikes feelings concerning Joyce’s death. He was going to leave flowers anonymously. I always loved it when Spike and Joyce shared the screen.
June 1st, 2006 at 10:16 am
Yeah, one of my favorite scenes is in Becoming Part 2 when Spike and Joyce are in her living room and when she asks if they’ve met before, he nonchalantly replies, “You hit me in the head with an axe once: ‘Get the hell away from my daughter.’” Classic moment.
I was also skeptical about Spike before he was ensouled. I never doubted he loved Buffy before he got his soul back but because he didn’t have a soul, his love for her was selfish in a way: He wanted to help her “fight the good fight” because he thought maybe Buffy would start to care for him, he wanted to help her financially because he knew she would be grateful to him.
Then in season 7 when he got his soul back, it seemed to me that he wanted to help Buffy just for the sake of helping her and not expecting anything in return. Like he said, he didn’t say that he loved her because he wanted her to recipricate his love, he just wanted her to know that he loved her. It seemed like when he got his soul, he was able to love Buffy whole-heartedly and selflessly. It was was more pure.
June 1st, 2006 at 1:23 pm
I wanted to mention a couple of things about the whole soulless Spike question. First of all, I assume that the main reason that he helped the gang patrol after Buffy’s death was because of the fact that he couldn’t actually kill people, and therefore if he wanted kill anything, it had to be demons. Secondly, I don’t in any way think that Spike was capable of doing good. No matter how much good he did, the fact is that, since he had no soul, he was simply going by a different moral compass than if he had had a soul. Therefore, he certainly could not be trusted, and would have inevitably betrayed everyone for that reason. Also, I have to agree with TwoToGo-Grave (it makes sense that I would agree with him, since he’s my brother) and his implication that the Scooby Gang should have killed Spike before he got his soul back (although it is good that they didn’t, as he’s an outstanding character.) Sorry for writing so much, and thanks for reading.
June 1st, 2006 at 2:03 pm
Another point that I didn’t make, or at least make more fully has to do with the fact that he will enevitably do evil deeds that could/will kill the scoobies or others if they are to let their guard down against him. I know that it’s not Spike, but just look at Harmony’s betrayal of the good guys on ‘Angel’ (in both ‘Disharmony’ and ‘Not Fade Away’), despite that fact that she had been trying to do good and (at least the second time) was virtually completely trusted by all of the good guys (just because Angel knew that she had betrayed him doesn’t count, as he clearly smelled Hamilton on her in his office before). Also, I left out the example of Spike’s betrayal in ‘As You Were’, and that is at his height of trying to do good (for absolutely no good reason, but still). What my brother wrote is true about his only reason for fighting evil being so that he can fight someone. He even stated that early on (in ‘Doomed’ mostly). I know that this is way too long, but there are more thoughts on the matter.
June 1st, 2006 at 10:40 pm
Something no one here has mentioned yet is that Spike cannot be good without a soul. If soulless vampires can be good, that means that Buffy is a murderer. The nature of her job is to kill vampires (who act evil because they have no soul). If some vampires could overcome this evilness due to love (or a chip in their head, as the case may be) then Buffy would have to stop killing vampires all willy-nilly and figure out which ones were “good.” That would throw the whole Buffyverse into chaos. Sorry, I think if Spike had no chip AND no soul, that he would be evil, and that makes him untrustworthy because the chip could’ve failed at any time during seasons 4-6.
June 3rd, 2006 at 3:50 am
Agreed Sunnydalehigh.
June 5th, 2006 at 3:50 am
If that was the only reason, Spike didn’t have to go patrolling with the gang to do so. He could easily have gone demon-hunting on his own, and he probably would’ve been more successful. He even says in Bargaining Part 1: “Come on! We’re never gonna get anything killed with you lot holding me back.” I think he knew that the Scoobies wouldn’t last long without some extra muscle, and on some level he liked being part of a group, hence the helping them out even when he didn’t have to.
I’m sorry but that episode made no sense. Ok, sure, Spike was keeping demon eggs which is not of the good, but there was no explanation given at all as to why he was keeping them, whether he knew he had to keep them refrigerated, or whether he was even The Doctor. There were too many unanswered questions in As You Were (for me anyway) and there could’ve been more of an attempt to clear things up, so I don’t fully agree with it.
There’s another reason I believe Spike can be good without a soul. When he loses his memory in Tabula Rasa, and once he’s found out he’s a vampire, he automatically assumes he’s good. His demonic nature could easily have led him to saying “wahey, I’m off to eat someone” but he didn’t. He convinced himself he was a good guy, on a mission of redemption and even a vampire with a soul. If Spike was incapable of any good without a soul, then during the memory loss spell his vampiric intuition could’ve led him to wreaking a bunch of havoc but I think the good intention in him stopped that from happening.
Either way, while I don’t necessarily agree with your views, I do respect them and I see where you’re coming from. At this point though, I’m just going to have to agree to disagree :-) And try to stop arguing because I really do write too much.
June 5th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
This topic sure has led to a great discussion. Good post Wynter, even though I obviously disagree (respectfully, of course.)
June 5th, 2006 at 5:57 pm
I just thought you might like to know that I agree with your arguments Wynter…
Spike might, and indeed does, make errors of judgment because of his lack of an ‘automatic’ conscience which would come with a soul, but his behaviour in general from the second half of season 5 onwards can in no way be described as intrinsically evil.
When Buffy died, if he didn’t care about the Scoobies, and Dawn in particular, he would have gone off and begun to live as a vampire again. The chip would not have prevented that, he could easily have gathered minions around himself to do the actual killing for him, Drusilla had shown him that was possible in ‘Crush’. He was clearly continuing to try to be ‘good’ even though he had no hope of achieving his original goal of attracting Buffy’s affections.
July 17th, 2006 at 9:19 pm
Hiyo, IMDB says his birthday is 20 August 1962, just for your updatey needs.
August 7th, 2006 at 2:23 am
Is there going to be a sixth season of Smallville?