Williams died in Los Angeles on Friday June 4, 2021 of colon cancer, his management confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. Williams began his career on the stage and earned a Tony nomination in 1965 for best featured actor in a play for his work in the powerful three-person drama Slow Dance on the Killing Ground. Decades later, he returned to Broadway to star opposite Maggie Smith in the original 1979 production Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day. On the big screen, the Harlem native portrayed Prince’s troubled father in Purple Rain (1984) and was Wesley Snipes and Michael Wright’s drug-addled dad...
