Treat Williams
- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Richard Treat Williams was born in Rowayton, Connecticut, to Marian
(Andrew), who dealt in antiques, and Richard Norman Williams, a
corporate executive. Educated at prep-school, he first made a serious
commitment to his craft during his days at Pennsylvania's Franklin and
Marshall College. Working summers with the nearby Fulton Repertory
Theatre at Lancaster in the heart of Amish country, Williams performed
the classics as well as contemporary dramas and musicals. After
graduating, Williams--whose first name, incidentally, is a family
surname on his mother's side--headed for Manhattan where he
understudied the Danny Zuko role in "Grease." After working in the
The Andrews Sisters musical "Over
Here," he made his film debut as a cop in
Deadly Hero (1975), then returned to
"Grease," this time in the starring role. While he took leaves for two
small film roles, in The Ritz (1976) and
The Eagle Has Landed (1976),
it was his stage work in "Grease" that led to his cinematic
breakthrough in Hair (1979). Spotted by
director Milos Forman, Williams was asked
to read for the role of Berger, the hippie. It took 13 auditions to
land the part, but the film's release catapulted Williams into stardom.
He then portrayed a GI on the make in
Steven Spielberg's
1941 (1979) and starred in the romantic
comedy Why Would I Lie? (1980)
before tackling the role of Danny Ciello, the disillusioned New York
City cop who blew the whistle on his corrupt colleagues in
Sidney Lumet's
Prince of the City (1981). He
followed that with
The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper (1981),
in which he played the legendary plane hijacker who successfully eluded
capture (by Robert Duvall);
Flashpoint (1984), in which he and
Kris Kristofferson starred as
a pair of maverick border patrolmen who come upon a large cache of
stolen money; Sergio Leone's
Once Upon a Time in America (1984),
in which he played a Jimmy Hoffa-like labor
organizer; and Smooth Talk (1985), a
screen adaptation of
Joyce Carol Oates' short story, "Where
Are You Going?" Television viewers have seen Williams in a prestigious
pair of dramas, Dempsey (1983),
a three-hour story of the hard-living heavyweight champ, and
John Erman's adaptation of
Tennessee Williams' classic "A
Streetcar Named Desire," which pitted Williams' Stanley Kowalski
against Ann-Margret's Blanche Dubois.
Williams has also returned to Broadway sporadically -- first to appear
in "Once in a Lifetime" while filming "Hair," and in 1981 to play the
role of the pirate king in "The Pirates of Penzance."
