Treat Williams

Williams was a distant relative of both Robert Treat Paine—a signatory to the Declaration of Independence—and Herbert Hoover, the 31st President of the United States.

Williams played football in high school and college.

He graduated from the Kent School in Connecticut and Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

As a teenager, he acted in high school and local theatre productions, and began to think seriously about an acting career during his first year of college: "I loved football very much, but I didn't think you could be a jock and be in the theatre company at the same time … I started to get serious about learning as much as possible about the craft of acting in my freshman year."

At one point, he was performing in three college shows simultaneously: "a comedy, a Shakespeare and a musical".

Williams launched his professional acting career in musical theatre; first as an understudy to several of the male leads in the Broadway production of Grease, and then in a touring production of that musical.

Williams rose to fame with starring roles in Milos Forman's film version of the musical Hair and in Steven Spielberg's historical comedy film 1941, both released in 1979.

Throughout the next decade, Williams appeared in a variety of supporting and leading film roles, such as the Steven Spielberg comedy 1941 (1979); adventure drama The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper (1981), in which he played the titular aircraft hijacker; the Sergio Leone crime epic Once Upon A Time In America (1984); action-thriller Flashpoint (1984); Peter Medak's The Men's Club (1986); and the cult horror-comedy Dead Heat (1988).

Richard Treat Williams (December 1, 1951 – June 12, 2023) was an American actor.

Williams was born in Stamford, Connecticut, on December 1, 1951, the son of Marian (née Andrew), an antiques dealer, and Richard Norman Williams, a corporate executive.

He moved with his family to Rowayton, Connecticut, when he was three.

His maternal great-great-great-grandfather was William Henry Barnum, a U.S. senator from Connecticut and third cousin of the showman P. T. Barnum.

On stage, Williams made his Broadway debut portraying Danny Zuko in the musical Grease (1972).

From March 1974 to January 1975, he starred as Utah in the Sherman Brothers' musical Over Here!.

He then returned to Grease on Broadway in the lead role of Danny Zuko for three years, later saying of the experience, "I had grown up learning all of the songs from West Side Story, so I was aware of what a big deal "Broadway" was. When I got my first little dressing room at the Royale Theatre … I thought, "I've arrived.

I'm here.

This is fantastic!" … there are Sunday matinees where you think, "I don't know how to get through this.

I'm just not in the mood to go to that high-energy place". Still, every time [I'd] hear that audience out there [and I] could feel how excited they were … [afterwards] I would leave my dressing room and I'd walk across the stage and I would just stand there. I could feel that the air was still pulsating with the energy of the actors and the audience".

In 1975, Williams made his feature film debut with a supporting role in the thriller Deadly Hero.

He received positive notices the following year for his portrayal of Michael Brick—a squeaky-voiced private detective—in The Ritz, a farcical comedy based on the play of the same name, and next appeared in a small part in the British war film The Eagle Has Landed (1976).

He returned to Broadway in Once in a Lifetime (1978), The Pirates of Penzance (1981), and Follies (2001).

Williams came to worldwide attention in 1979 when he starred as George Berger—a leading member of a gang of flower children—in the Miloš Forman film Hair, based on the 1967 musical.

Writing for the Sioux City Journal, critic Bob Thomas called it "a rare flight of creative imagination that widens the dimensions of the movie musical" and believed that Williams' performance "could not be better".

In her mixed review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "As his name might indicate, Treat Williams is one of the better things Hair has to offer … [he is] is the only one of the players who really suggests the spirit of euphoria upon which the original [stage production] meant to capitalize".

Williams' performance earned him a nomination for the 1980 Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year.

He starred in many films throughout his career, including Prince of the City (1981), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Flashpoint (1984), Smooth Talk (1985), Dead Heat (1988), The Phantom (1996), The Devil's Own (1997), Deep Rising (1998), the Substitute franchise (1998–2001), The Deep End of the Ocean (1999), Miss Congeniality 2 (2005), and 127 Hours (2010).

His portrayal of Daniel Ciello—in Sidney Lumet's 1981 neo-noir crime drama Prince of the City—brought Williams his second Golden Globe nomination and some of the strongest reviews of his career, with Roger Ebert saying of his "demanding and gruelling" performance, "Williams is almost always onscreen, and almost always in situations of extreme stress, fatigue, and emotional turmoil. We see him coming apart before our eyes".

"It's doubtful whether a better performance was committed to celluloid in 1981 than Treat Williams' portrayal of the tortured Danny Ciello. In a staggering feat of acting prowess, Williams essays a fundamentally good, yet deeply flawed, human being disintegrating under intolerable pressure with rare courage and intensity."

For his television roles he has received the Golden Globe and the Emmy Award nominations for his roles as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1984) and Michael Ovitz in The Late Shift (1996), respectively.

Williams starred as Stanley Kowalski in the 1984 television adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire, earning his third Golden Globe nomination, and was nominated for the 1985 Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead for his portrayal of Arnold Friend in that year's Smooth Talk.

In her review of the latter for The Washington Post, Rita Kempley wrote, "The [film's] mood grows progressively darker as Treat Williams, playing a trashy dreamboat, drives up in his LeMans convertible … Matching Dern in her stunning performance, Williams is in his best role since Prince of the City".

Williams' film credits throughout the mid-late 1990s included Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995), Mulholland Falls (1996), The Devil's Own (1997), cult action-horror Deep Rising (1998), and The Deep End of the Ocean (1999).

Between 1993 and 1994, Williams starred as divorce attorney Jack Harold on the CBS sitcom Good Advice.

The series ran for two seasons.

In a retrospective review of the film published by Empire in 2000, Simon Braud wrote:

His portrayal of Dr. "Andy" Brown on the WB's Everwood (2002–2006) earned him nominations for two Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Over his career he earned nominations for a Golden Globe Award, Primetime Emmy Award, and a Independent Spirit Award.

Everwood 2002-2006

He also played recurring roles on White Collar (2012–2013), Chicago Fire (2013–2018), Blue Bloods (2016–2023), and Feud: Capote vs. The Swans (2024).

He portrayed Mick O'Brien on the Hallmark series Chesapeake Shores (2016–2022).