Cindy Ord/Getty Images for the Tribeca Film Festival
Treat Williams seen here in New York City in 2016.
CNN –
Treat Williams, a veteran actor who starred in TV dramas “Blue Bloods” and “Everwood,” died Monday night from complications in a motorcycle accident in Vermont, his longtime agent Barry McPherson told CNN.
He was 71.
While local authorities have yet to name Williams, Jacob Gribble, the Dorset, Vermont fire chief, told People the accident happened Monday around 5 p.m. EST on Route 30 at Long Trail Auto near Dorset. According to Gribble, investigators believe the driver of a vehicle was making a turn and did not see the motorcycle Williams was riding when the accident occurred. CNN reached out to Gribble for comment. According to a Facebook post by Manchester, VT firefighters, one person was airlifted to a regional medical center and another transported by ambulance.
Born in Rowayton, Connecticut, Richard Treat Williams studied drama in college and moved to New York shortly after graduating. There he secured the understudy for John Travolta in “Grease” and later replaced him as Danny Zuko.
Williams’ varied film career included an early role in the 1979 adaptation of director Milos Forman’s musical Hair, followed by a starring role alongside another high-profile director, Sidney Lumet, in the dark undercover crime thriller Prince of the City. two years later.
United Artists/Getty Images
Treat Williams with others in a scene from the movie Hair, 1979.
While Williams seemed destined to attain great fame, his next few films failed to live up to those initial expectations, although he continued to work, including in a TV movie remake of A Streetcar Named Desire and other TV movies in which he played the boxer Jack played Dempsey and FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover.
During the ’90s, the actor slipped into various roles, playing the villain in the pulp comic adaptation The Phantom and super agent Michael Ovitz in the HBO film based on the book The Late Shift about The Late Shift. based on the Tonight Show successor battle between Jay Leno and David Letterman. He received a Primetime Emmy nomination for this role.
Later that decade, Williams enjoyed leading action star status in the 1998 B-movie Deep Rising, about a murderous sea monster, in which he starred alongside Famke Janssen, Wes Studi and Djimon Hounsou.
Williams then found new fame on television, starring in the CW series Everwood for four seasons in the 1980s and most recently in Chicago Fire. He was also part of the core cast of “Chesapeake Shores,” appearing in 53 episodes between 2016 and 2022. Last year, he also had a supporting role in the HBO miniseries We Own This City, producer David Simon’s chronicle of the corruption and domestic politics of the Baltimore Police Department.
The late actor is survived by his wife Pam Van Sant and their two children.
“I’m just devastated,” McPherson told People of Williams on Monday. “He was the nicest guy. He was so talented.”
“He was an actor. Filmmakers loved him. He’s been the heart of Hollywood since the late 1970s,” he added.
In 2020, Williams directed an Acting Lessons video for Netflix, in which he said, “The only thing I would say to younger actors is, care about what you do, not how you do it. ”
“If you’re very focused on what you have to say, what you want to say to the other person, or what you’re conveying to the audience, you’re going to feel a lot more comfortable, and I believe that, truly.”