‘Everwood’ Star Treat Williams Dead After Motorcycle Accident

Treat Williams, an actor known for his roles in the TV show “Everwood” and the film version of the musical “Hair,” died Monday after a motorcycle accident. He was 71.

Authorities said Williams was riding his motorcycle in Vermont just before 5 p.m. on Monday before a vehicle attempted to turn into a parking lot in front of him. Williams, who was wearing a helmet, wasn’t able to avoid the car and was thrown from the bike.

He suffered critical injuries and airlifted to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.

“They couldn’t save him,” Williams’ longtime agent, Barry McPherson, told the Los Angeles Times. “And it’s just such a terrible thing, an unnecessary thing.”

The man who was driving the vehicle that hit Williams wasn’t hospitalized. Police said an investigation into the matter was ongoing.

Williams was born in 1951 in Stamford, Connecticut, and made his onscreen debut in the 1975 film “Deadly Hero.” He spent three years as the understudy to the lead for the Broadway production of “Grease” and went on to appear in many films, including the adaptation of the musical “Hair” in 1979 and the action movie “Deep Rising” in 1998.

“The last audition for ‘Hair’ was especially strange. It was my twelfth audition,” Williams recalled in an interview with Vermont Magazine last year. “As I started the monologue, I started removing all of my clothing. At the end of the monologue, I was standing stark naked in front of them … They applauded, and I told them, ‘This is all that I’ve got, I don’t know what else I can give you.’”

“[The director] came up to me after I walked out and told me that he was going to give me the part,” he said.

He was later a mainstay on television in the early 2000s, starring in “Everwood,” a WB drama about a fictional neurosurgeon who moves to a small town after the death of his wife. The show ran for four seasons.

Williams was nominated for a primetime Emmy in 1996 for his role in the HBO movie “The Late Shift,” which centered on succession plans on “The Tonight Show” amid the departure of Johnny Carson.

Williams was an avid aviator and skier and recalled giving a young John Travolta his first ride in a small plane when they were both in “Grease.”

“I’ve been flying for 50 years, but it feels like yesterday that I was doing my first solo flight in Connecticut,” he told Vermont Magazine. “It’s always been my way to cope with the stress of working in an industry that has so many ups and downs. It also gives me something to be interested in outside of acting and waiting for the next job.”

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