{"id":10856,"date":"2023-06-13T13:22:06","date_gmt":"2023-06-13T13:22:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=10856"},"modified":"2023-06-18T12:45:34","modified_gmt":"2023-06-18T12:45:34","slug":"how-fame-got-the-better-of-treat-williams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=10856","title":{"rendered":"How fame got the better of Treat Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013 Treat Williams, who died aged 71 on June 12 in a motorcycle accident, became instantly famous in the movie version of \u2018Hair\u2019 in 1979. After shining brightly in Sidney Lumet\u2019s fine 1981 cop picture \u2018Prince of the City\u2019 (below), he was on track to become a major movie star until fame and cocaine got in the way.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u2018It wasn\u2019t for a very long period,\u2019 he told me, \u2018but I was always trying to keep up with everybody else. I think that when you first achieve a certain degree of fame it\u2019s like an aphrodesiac or something. You get caught up in it. It was right after \u201cHair\u201d(left) \u00a0opened for about a year or so. You have to live it for a while until it wears off. Then that feeling just gets real tiresome and it\u2019s no fun.\u2019<\/p>\n

The death of John Belushi in 1982 helped straighten him out. \u2018Johnny\u2019s death had a lot to do with it,\u2019 Williams said. \u2018The reality of all of us going to the funeral made everybody think about how you\u2019re going to live your life. Do you want to be able to explore your talent or do you want to abuse it? John had a lot of stuff left and it was destroyed.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>His high times sidelined Williams in his rush to bigscreen stardom. He was part of Steven Spielberg\u2019s large cast in the bloated comedy \u20181941\u2019 but his big chance was gone. He settled for a long career on episodic television with four seasons playing widower Dr. Andy Brown on the drama series \u2018Everwood\u2019 from 2002.<\/p>\n

When I spoke to him in 1984, it waa\u00a0 <\/span>for s crime movie titled \u2018Flashpoint\u2019 notable mostly for its Tangerine Dream soundtrack. His co-star was Kris Kristofferson (below), another guy with a lively past. Williams was from Connecticut and Kristofferson was from Texas but Williams said they got along well on location in Arizona.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u2018We\u2019ve become good friends,\u2019 he said. \u2018It was one of those situations where opposites attract. He\u2019s a very bright guy. We ran and worked out a lot. That\u2019s all we did.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Did they swap old tales? \u2018No,\u2019 Williams said, \u2018we were too busy doing what we were doing, you know? I mean, once in a while we\u2019d laugh about it. Kris would tell a story about making \u201cA Star is Born\u201d but he said he doesn\u2019t remember a lot about it.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 Treat Williams, who died aged 71 on June 12 in a motorcycle accident, became instantly famous in the movie version of \u2018Hair\u2019 in 1979. After shining brightly in Sidney Lumet\u2019s fine 1981 cop picture \u2018Prince … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,15],"tags":[5374,5375,3426,5373,5376,5377,1693,4686,5372],"class_list":["post-10856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-interviews","category-television","tag-everwood","tag-flashpoint","tag-hair","tag-prince-of-the-city","tag-cocaine","tag-fame","tag-john-belushi","tag-kris-kristofferson","tag-treat-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10856"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10904,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10856\/revisions\/10904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}