What is James Woods’ IQ?
Two reported scores, neither backed by a score report.

No IQ test result has been published for James Woods as of November 2026. He says he scored 184 on the Stanford-Binet, but no score report, date or examiner has surfaced, and the 180 on celebrity lists has no documented source. This page estimates 135–150 from his reported SAT scores and his MIT record, which is an inference and not a measurement.

Woods says he did: in a Route Magazine interview he describes a 184 on the Stanford-Binet. No record of that James Woods IQ test has been published, so its date, edition and examiner are unknown. That matters because Stanford-Binet editions before 1960 reported a ratio IQ, while the fifth edition (2003) uses deviation scores with a top band of 145–160.

Neither is documented, but 184 is the number Woods gives himself: when Card Player asked about 180 in a profile dated June 14, 2006, he said it is 184. The 180 appears on lists such as a PokerListings player profile, which attributes it to the Stanford-Binet without a byline or date. On the usual scale (mean 100, standard deviation 15), 184 would be 5.6 standard deviations above the mean, roughly one person in 90 million.

Woods has no documented genius-level test result, but the record shows very high academic ability. He was admitted to MIT, has a reported perfect verbal SAT, and earned two Academy Award nominations and two Primetime Emmy Awards. Our 135–150 range, on the usual scale with a standard deviation of 15, runs from roughly the top 1 percent to about 1 person in 2,300. “Genius” is a label, not a test category; see what a genius IQ level means.

On this site’s estimates, Woods’s 135–150 range shares its floor with Natalie Portman (135–145) but reaches five points higher, overlaps Geena Davis (130–145, anchored on a Mensa qualification), and sits below Dolph Lundgren (140–155). Benedict Cumberbatch carries the same 180 on celebrity lists, against a range of 125–140. These compare ranges built from records, not test scores.

A Card Player profile dated June 14, 2006 reports a perfect verbal score and 779 on the math section. In a Route Magazine interview, Woods says he had perfect college board scores, so the two accounts differ on math. No score report has been published for either.

No. The SAT is an achievement test with its own scale, though it tracks general ability closely: in a 2004 Psychological Science study, Frey and Detterman found SAT scores correlated .82 with a general-ability measure from the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery in 917 participants. A correlation of .82 still leaves a standard error of about nine IQ points, which is why one SAT result supports a range and not one number. The method is explained in SAT score to IQ conversion.

Yes. MIT’s admissions blog (January 10, 2007) says he studied Course 17, political science, served as president of the Dramashop theater group, and left one semester short of graduating to pursue acting. MIT News listed him as class of 1969 in October 1998.

The SAT claim has a named test, reported section scores and a published account (Card Player, 2006), while the 184 has no edition, date, examiner or score report. Both come from Woods’s own account, so neither is verified; the SAT is the one that can be matched to a normed test with a measured relationship to general ability. A score report for the 184 would prompt a new review of the range.

You can find out in about fifteen minutes. The IQ Metrics assessment is 30 questions, scored on the same 100-mean scale used throughout this page, so your result and the estimate above are at least expressed in the same units — one measured, one inferred. Once you have a number, the leaderboard shows where it would sit, and how we score and norm it explains the benchmarking.

From the documented record rather than a test — the method is named above and set out in full under how we read a number. Compare it against the other actors profiles, starting with Natalie Portman.