actor
Personal Information
Born Keith David Williams on June 4, 1956 in New York City; son of Lester and Delores (Dickenson) Williams; married Margit Edwards (an actress), 1990.
Education: High School of the Performing Arts, New York City, class of 1973; Juilliard School of Music and Drama, New York City, B.F.A., 1979; also studied acting at the Edith Skinner Institute and the La Mama Repertory Company, New York City.
Career
Stage appearances include Pirates of Penzance, NYSF, 1980; A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1981; Coriolanus, NYSF, 1988; Titus Andronicus, 1989; Jelly's Last Jam, Los Angeles, 1990-91, NYC, 1992; Boesman and Lena, NYC, 1992; Hedda Gabler, NYC 1994; Kit Marlowe, NYC, 2000. Films include The Thing, 1982; Platoon, 1986; They Live, 1988; Road House, 1989; Always, 1990; Men at Work, 1990; The Two Jakes, 1990; Article 99, 1992; Final Analysis, 1992; Reality Bites, 1994; Major League II, 1994; The Quick and the Dead, 1995; Dead Presidents, 1995; Clockers, 1995; High Incident (TV), 1996; Flipping, 1997; Armageddon, 1998; There's Something About Mary, 1999; The Tiger Woods Story, (TV) 2000; Pitch Black, 2000; Where the Heart Is, 2000; The Replacements, 2000. TV roles include Roots II: The Next Generation, 1979; "There Are No Children Here," ABC, 1993; The Equalizer; A Man Called Hawk. Narration work includes Spawn, HBO; Gargoyles, Disney.
Life's Work
Keith David is a versatile actor whose wide-ranging list of credits includes the films There's Something About Mary, Armageddon, and Platoon, the Broadway musical Jelly's Last Jam, and numerous Shakespearean parts in Off-Broadway productions. "I'm an actor with a real hunger for the theater, but I also enjoy moving from one genre to another," David told D. Thigpen of Essence. Ann Brown of Black Elegance called David "really more of an actor's actor than a want-to-be-superstar."
Keith David was born Keith David Williams in Harlem in 1956, and was brought up in the Elmhurst section of Queens. David was inspired to become an actor by the programs he saw on television, especially older material such as the Little Rascals comedy serial and the James Cagney movie Angels with Dirty Faces. Another significant experience leading David to acting came at age nine when he played the Cowardly Lion in a school production of The Wizard of Oz.
As a teenager David attended New York's prestigious High School for the Performing Arts and sang in a city-wide boys' choir. After finishing high school he moved on to the Juilliard School, a music and drama conservatory in Manhattan, where he received rigorous training in classical acting. "I love classic plays, the kind of stuff you don't get to say every day," David told Thigpen.
First Professional Acting Job
In 1979, soon after earning his bachelor's of fine arts degree, David, who had dropped his last name Williams because there was already another Keith Williams on the Actor's Equity list, landed his first professional role when he was cast as the understudy to actor Robert Christian in the role of Tullus Aufidius in Coriolanus at the New York Shakespeare Festival. The production starred Morgan Freeman and Gloria Foster. Over the next decade, David was a mainstay at the New York Shakespeare Festival. Founded by the legendary producer Joseph Papp and operating out of the open-air Delacorte Theatre in Central Park and the Public Theater in Lower Manhattan, the Festival is one of New York's most powerful producing organizations and offers wide array of plays in addition to Shakespearean works. Festival productions in which David appeared include The Haggadah: A Passover Cantata, The Pirates of Penzance, a highly publicized mounting of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta starring Linda Ronstadt and Kevin Kline, Waiting for Godot, A Midsummer Night's Dream, La Boheme, and A Map of the World. To supplement his acting income, David studied Shiatsu massage and offered his services to fellow performers, charging them whatever they could afford to pay.
David's first film appearance came in The Thing, a remake of the 1950s Sci-Fi classic about scientists at an Arctic outpost terrorized by an alien creature dug out of the ice. Directed by horror-specialist John Carpenter and starring Kurt Russell, The Thing was released in the summer of 1982 but failed at the box office. "It was not a summer film," David explained to Ian Spelling of Starlog. "I believe that if they had brought The Thing out in October, November or even Christmas, it would have done well. But it ended up competing with Poltergeist and E.T. ...It was a question of timing. I thought John [Carpenter] did a fantastic job, and it was a fantastic experience for me." In 1988, David had a featured role in Carpenter's They Live, a horror/social satire about aliens taking control of the Earth through television advertizing. The Motion Picture Guide Annual called They Live "a whole lot of fun and well worth seeing" adding that the "supporting cast, headed up by the always-impressive Keith David, is excellent."
Taken Seriously As An Actor
The most critically acclaimed film in which David has so far appeared is the 1986 Vietnam War drama Platoon, director Oliver Stone's harrowing look at a young enlisted man's tour of duty in Vietnam. David played a cynical soldier who sneers at the lofty attitudes of the lead character, played by Charlie Sheen. Platoon won the Academy Award for Best Picture. David told Brown that his work in Platoon "was one of the greatest experiences I've ever had. It altered my opinion about the Vietnam War. To me, the challenge of playing the part was living as that person. In high school, I was one of the guys protesting the war. The experience of the film made me look at the situation from a different point of view, and that changed how I thought about that war and it actually made me a bit ashamed of my past actions."
Platoon also marked a change in David's career. "In Hollywood I was suddenly taken more seriously as an actor. When I came back to New York it was almost as if I were a different person," David told Thigpen. In 1988, when the New York Shakespeare Festival again produced Coriolanus, David played Tullus Aufidius (the part which he had understudied nine years earlier) opposite Christopher Walken in the title role.
Most of David's stage work has been done Off-Broadway and in regional theatres, yet he is not without a Broadway smash on his resume. In 1992 David had a principal role in the musical Jelly's Last Jam, a fanciful look at the life of jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton. David played a Mephistophelian character named Chimney Man who accuses a dying Morton with betraying his race by helping to tear jazz away from its roots in the Black community. Morton, played as an adult by Gregory Hines and as a youth by Savion Glover, defends himself against Chimney Man's charges by going through his complicated life story. Robert Brustein of The New Republic called Jelly's Last Jam "a succulent musical spread of acting, dancing, and singing that represents a genuine advance in Black theatrical expression" and called David's portrayal of Chimney Man "mesmerizing...with menacing intensity and virility." David earned a Tony Award nomination for best supporting actor in a musical for Jelly's Last Jam.
Leading Man
The list of David's lead roles includes a revival of South African playwright Athol Fugard's drama Boesman and Lena at the Manhattan Theatre Club in the spring of 1992. Directed by Fugard and co-starring Lynne Thigpen as Lena, the play presents one night in the life of a black South African couple left homeless by the government-ordered bulldozing of their shanty town. "I know of no other play that depicts the horror of homelessness and vagrancy so tellingly...Boesman and Lena's straits are presented as emblematic of the human condition...Keith David as Boesman has the more difficult role, since he must somehow win our sympathy while glowering through most of Act 1. He does, and when his glower finally explodes into speech he is tremendous," wrote Thomas M. Disch in The Nation. Edith Oliver of The New Yorker wrote that "Miss Thigpen and Mr. David and their play are spellbinding."
Another lead role came in the 1996 Broadway production of Seven Guitars, the sixth installment in playwright August Wilson's saga of African-American life. David played Floyd "Schoolboy" Barton, a blues guitarist in 1940s Pittsburgh who meets an untimely death when on the brink of stardom. "I've trained my entire life for such an opportunity in the theater, and Wilson is one of my greatest heroes," David told D.G. in Essence, adding that "Floyd is a man I identify with. He's an artist who wants the big time." John Simon of New York Seven Guitars praised David's portrayal of Floyd as "splendid."
Roles in Science Fiction Films
Having begun his film career in a horror movie, David has continued to work frequently in genre pictures. He especially enjoys science fiction. "I feel that in one of my previous lives, I was a philosopher, so I like the philosophy of science fiction...You start out with a premise and then you take these wonderful, imaginative quantum leaps into different realms, into different realities, and you must fashion a philosophical foundation for the world you create," David explained to Spelling.
In the 1998 blockbuster Armageddon, in which a huge asteroid is hurtling directly towards Earth, David portrayed the fictitious General Kimsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. To prepare for the part, David studied the life of General Colin Powell. He watched videotapes of Powell to get a sense of military bearing and read Powell's autobiography to better understand how a high-ranking officer looks at problems. David said of the Kimsey character to Anna Varnon-Grier of New York Voice/Harlem USA, "[He's] basically a level headed guy. But he's not absent of emotion...When the safety of the planet is threatened, we're the guys who must do something about it. Kimsey's job is to keep a clear distinction between his feelings and what needs to be done...As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Kimsey deals directly with the President of the United States. At a crucial point he gets an order from the President that he must obey; regardless of his personal feelings. It is his duty." Veronica Mixon of the Philadelphia Tribune called Armageddon, which starred Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, and Billy Bob Thornton, a "high action, riveting adventure that keeps you nailed to the edge of your seats."
The 2000 sci-fi/horror hybrid film Pitch Black gave David the meaty part of a Moslem cleric, Imam, who is among a group of disparate people stranded on a remote and dangerous planet after their spaceship crashes. "What attracted me to Pitch Black is that Imam is a man of spirit and he refuses to give up his faith, even though it is shaken and, at some points, shattered. He continues to believe that there is a God and that He will find a way to bring us out of this," David told Spelling. David delved into Islam in order to better understand Imam's thinking. "I've always had my curiosities, and I've studied various religions. It's all about spirit and getting in touch with the source. The sense of spiritual oneness is shared with every philosophy, whether you get that through meditation or prayer," David explained to Brown. Directed by David Twohy Pitch Black featured Radha Mitchell, Vin Diesel, Claudia Black, Lewis Fitz-Gerald, and Rhianna Griffith.
Voice Work
David's smooth, expressive voice is much in demand for animation and narration work. He has provided speech for the animated science fiction television series The Fantastic Four, Gargoyles, and Spawn. He also narrated Ken Burns' twenty-hour documentary on jazz. "I love voice work. First of all, I love animation...Also, you don't have to dress up," David told Spelling.
Trained in singing as well as acting, David has developed a cabaret vocal act that has been engaged at top notch venues including the Hotel Delmonico in New York. "I enjoy performing cabaret, sharing my passion for love songs...I can connect with the audience in a way I cannot through film or a Broadway theater," David told Don Thomas of the New York Beacon. In his cabaret act David delivers renditions of songs made popular by Lou Rawls, Joe Williams, Billy Eckstine, among others. He especially enjoys acting roles that allow him to incorporate singing and he dreams of someday starring in a film biography of Nat King Cole.
A resident of Brooklyn, David has been married since 1990 to actress Margit Edwards, whom he met during the run of Coriolanus in 1988. Ambitious and energetic, David would like to play more lead roles. Despite his desire for greater fame, David is quick to point out that a performer's skill does not necessarily correspond to his level of celebrity. He explained to Brown, "The measure of success is to be more than just adequate. You have to be able to let the art inside of you ring."
Awards
Actor's Equity's Sinclair Bayfield Award for Coriolanus, 1989; Tony Award nomination for Jelly's Last Jam, 1992; Daytime Emmy Award nomination for The Tiger Woods Story, 2000.
Further Reading
Books
- Motion Picture Guide Annual 1989, Chicago: CineBooks, 1990.
- Black Elegance, March/April 200, p. 67.
- Essence, May 1992, p. 52; June 1996, p. 38.
- Nation, March 2, 1992, p. 283.
- New Republic, June 8, 1992, 33-34.
- New York Amsterdam News, May 3, 2000, p. 26.
- New York Beacon, October 6, 1999, p. 30.
- New York Voice, Inc./Harlem USA, July 8, 1998, p. 17.
- New Yorker, February 10, 1992, p. 76.
- Philadelphia Tribune, July 7, 1998, p. 4B.
- Sacramento Observer, February 16, 2000.Starlog, May 2000, p. 76.
- Additional information also provided by Abrams Artists Agency.
— Mary Kalfatovic
