Trivia

Co-starred in Hoodlum (1997), which starred Laurence Fishburne as Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson. Williams later played Bumpy Johnson in American Gangster (2007).

Enlisted in the US by Army and served as a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division.

Best remembered by the public for his role as Linc Hayes on The Mod Squad (1968).

Grandson of jazz and blues entertainers Clarence Williams and Eva Taylor.

Survived by his daughter Jamey Phillips, and his sister Sandra Pugh.

Was nominated for Broadway's 1965 Tony Award as Best Supporting or Featured Actor (Dramatic) for "Slow Dance on the Killing Ground."

His wife Kelly is 37 years his junior.

He also served as artist-in-residence at Brandeis University in 1966.

Williams began pursuing an acting career after spending two years as a U.S. Army paratrooper in C Company, 506th Infantry, of the 101st Airborne Division.

Williams married the actress Gloria Foster in 1967. They worked together on The Mod Squad; Foster made two guest appearances. The two also acted in a 1964 film The Cool World. In 1984 they filed for divorce but remained friends, and Williams announced Foster's death in 2001.

He first appeared on Broadway in The Long Dream (1960). Continuing his work on stage, he appeared in Walk in Darkness (1963), Sarah and the Sax (1964), Doubletalk (1964), and King John.

Clarence Williams III was an American actor. He played the character of Linc Hayes in the police television series The Mod Squad from 1968 to 1973.

From 2003 to 2007, Williams had a recurring role as Philby Cross in the Mystery Woman film series on the Hallmark Channel. He appeared in all but the first of the eleven films alongside Kellie Martin (J.E. Freeman played Philby in the Mystery Woman first film). In the seventh (Mystery Woman: At First Sight) film, he reunited with his Mod Squad co-star Michael Cole.

His breakout theatrical role was in William Hanley's Slow Dance on the Killing Ground, for which he received a Tony Award nomination. The New York Times drama critic Howard Taubman wrote of his performance, "Mr. Williams glides like a dancer, giving his long, fraudulently airy speeches the inner rhythms of fear and showing the nakedness of terror when he ceases to pretend.".

Raised by his paternal grandmother, he became interested in acting after accidentally walking onto a stage at a theater below a Harlem YMCA.