Treat Williams

Treat Williams
Williams in 1982
Born	Richard Treat Williams (1951-12-01) December 1, 1951 Rowayton, Connecticut, United States
Occupation	Actor/author
Years active	1972–present
Spouse(s)	Pam Van Sant (m. 1988)
Children	2, Ellie and Gill

Richard Treat Williams (born December 1, 1951) is a Golden Globe and Emmy award-nominated American actor and children's book author who has appeared on film, stage and television.^[1] He first became well known for his starring role in the 1979 film Hair, and later also starred in the films Prince of the City, Once Upon a Time in America, The Late Shift and 127 Hours. From 2002 to 2006, he was the lead of the television series Everwood and was nominated for two Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Early life

Williams was born in Rowayton, Connecticut, the son of Marian (née Andrew), an antiques dealer, and Richard Norman Williams, a corporate executive.^[2] His maternal great-great-great-grandfather was Senator William Henry Barnum of Connecticut, the third cousin of the showman P. T. Barnum,^[3] and a distant relative was Robert Treat Paine, who was a signatory to the Declaration of Independence.^[4] Williams graduated from the Kent School in Connecticut and Franklin and Marshall College. Williams was featured in the February 1980 edition of Playgirl.^[4]

Career

Williams made his film debut in the 1976 thriller film Deadly Hero.^[5] He came to world attention in 1979, when he starred in the Miloš Forman film Hair, which was based on the 1967 Broadway musical. He has gone on to appear in over 75 films and several television series, including, most notably, 1941 (1979), Once Upon A Time In America (1984), Dead Heat (1988), Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995), and Deep Rising (1998).

Williams was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his part in Hair as George Berger. He got a second Golden Globe nomination for starring in Sidney Lumet's Prince of the City (1981) and a third for his performance as Stanley Kowalski in the television presentation of A Streetcar Named Desire. In 1996, Williams was nominated for a Best Actor Emmy Award by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for his work in The Late Shift, an HBO movie, in which he portrayed agent Michael Ovitz.

Williams has also worked as a director, winning two festival awards for directing Texan in Showtime's Chanticleer Films series.

In 1996, he played villain Xander Drax in Paramount's big budget comic book adaptation The Phantom, in which Williams' character did his best to take over the world and kill Billy Zane's mysterious superhero.

Williams' career includes numerous stage roles. He won a Drama League Award for his work in the Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's Follies, and another for starring in the off-Broadway production of Captains Courageous. Other notable Broadway shows include Grease, the Sherman Brothers' Over Here!, Once in a Lifetime, Pirates of Penzance and Love Letters, and off-Broadway, he has appeared in David Mamet's Oleanna and Oh, Hell (at Lincoln Center), Some Men Need Help and Randy Newman's Maybe I'm Doing It Wrong. He premiered the Los Angeles production of Love Letters and appeared in War Letters at the Canon Theatre in Los Angeles.

Williams may be best known for his leading role as Dr. Andrew Brown in the WB television series Everwood, about a New York City neurosurgeon who moves his family to Colorado. Although the show's ratings were never spectacular, it won critical acclaim and had a devoted following. Williams received two SAG Award nominations (2003 and 2004) for his role on the show.

Williams has recently made several guest appearances on the ABC drama Brothers & Sisters playing David Morton, a friend and potential suitor of the Sally Field character. Williams starred in the short lived series Heartland on TNT as Nathaniel Grant, the head of a Pittsburgh organ transplant center, before it was canceled due to low ratings. He also starred in a Lifetime movie called the Staircase Murders, which aired April 15, 2007.

Williams starred in a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, titled Beyond the Blackboard, with his former Everwood co-star, Emily VanCamp, which aired on CBS on April 24, 2011.^[6]

In early 2010, videos were posted on YouTube as well as edits made to Williams' Wikipedia page and a Facebook page made faking his death. These included a graphic and detailed explanation as to his illness and place of death. In August 2011, Williams responded to these rumors in an interview with Contact Music when speaking of more recent rumors linking him to the new Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained. Regarding the death hoax, Williams stated, "I did see that and I think those things are dangerous for your family and friends."

Williams in 2008

Williams has been cast in the CBS television pilot Peachtree Lines as mayor Lincoln Rylan. The serial is an examination of political, social, and cultural issues in Atlanta also starring Victoria Rowell (Naomi Grace), Ving Rhames (Ving Wesley), James Van Der Beek (Garrett Cindell), Jason Dohring (Travis Diring), and Jena Malone (Sierra Jayden).

Thora Birch and Williams on the set of the upcoming film The Etruscan Smile

Adding to his long list of accomplishments, Williams has now published a children's book titled Air Show! (Illustrated by Robert Neubecker, and published in 2010 by Disney/Hyperion Books). The target audience being children ages three to seven, the book playfully documents the airshow experience with simple text and bold illustrations of such aircraft as a Boeing B-17, a Pitts Special biplane, and the U.S. Navy's Blue Angel F/A-18.

Personal life

In 1969, Williams' high-school football coach, who was also a flight instructor, offered to train him in a Piper Super Cub. Williams became an FAA instrument-rated commercial pilot with privileges in both single engine and multi-engine airplanes, rotorcraft. He also is certified as a flight instructor.^[7] Williams holds a type-rating for Cessna Citation jets.^[8] He has owned a Clipped-wing Cub, Cherokee 180, Seneca II, and a Navajo Chieftain which is used for family travel between homes.^[9]

Williams lives with his wife, Pam Van Sant, and two children, Gill and Ellie, in Manchester, Vermont.

Filmography

Film

Television

Theatre

References

External links

• Treat Williams cast bio on The WB
• Treat Williams at the Internet Movie Database
• Treat Williams at the Internet Broadway Database
  
• Treat Williams at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Remarkably Good - TFL.org approved fanlisting for Treat Williams