Celebrity Biographies
Clarence Williams II
He starred in “Youth Patrol”, one of the most emblematic series of the late 60s, and played Prince’s father. Clarence Williams III passed away on June 4, 2021, at the age of 81, at his Los Angeles residence, after a long battle with colon cancer.
Born August 21, 1939, New Yorker Clarence Williams added “III” to his last name as the son of professional musician Clarence “Clay” Williams, Jr., and jazz and blues composer and pianist Clarence Williams. His mother was the singer and actress Eva Taylor. Raised by his paternal grandmother, he began acting after two years as a paratrooper in the Army.
Clarence Williams III appeared on the Broadway stage for the first time with “The Long Dream” in 1980. He made his film debut as an army messenger in The Peak of Heroes , in whose credits he did not even appear. But he became popular in 1968, when he gave life to undercover agent Lincoln Hayes, one of the protagonists of the series Youth Patrol , which ran for five seasons.
On the set of fiction, he met love. Clarence Williams III married fellow actress Gloria Foster (the popular Pythoness from The Matrix ), who had had two guest appearances on the series, in 1967. They had no children and divorced in 1984, but remained close friends until the her death in 2001.
After the popular series, Clarence Williams III played the father of musical idol Prince , in the musical Purple Rain . Since the mid-1980s, Clarence Williams III has lavished himself in supporting roles, as one of the villains in 52 Live or Die , an FBI agent in the series Twin Peaks , a pianist who challenges the central character in The Legend of the Pianist in the Ocean , colonel in The General’s Daughter , member of a trio of robbers, in Reindeer , mob boss Bumpy Johnson, in his brief appearance in American Gangster , and hotel clerk in The Butler. He retired in 2018, after Mr. Malevolent , a mix between comedy and horror in which he accompanied Danny Trejo .