An actor of uncommon intensity, 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.
Williams owned a debt of gratitude to Bill Cosby, who had seen Slow Dance on the Killing Ground and recommended the actor to producer Aaron Spelling, who was casting The Mod Squad.
“They went in, they rob the store, you heard a pistol shot and they ran in the car,” the producer recalled in a 1999 interview for the Archive of American Television.
Williams, Peggy Lipton as Julie Barnes and Michael Cole as Pete Cochran portrayed young adults who had run-ins with the law — Linc had been arrested during the Watts riots — before becoming cops under the command of Capt.
The Mod Squad tapped into the countercultural vibe of the era, incorporating timely issues like racism, anti-war protests and drug addiction into storylines as Linc, Julie and Pete infiltrated high schools, acting classes, prisons, hippie newspapers, gangs, movie sets, etc.
Williams was born on Aug.
“They wanted to go six or seven years, and I decided I didn’t want to do that,” Williams told the Chicago Tribune in 1997.
He went on to play FBI agent Roger Hardy on the original Twin Peaks and the humanoid Omet’iklan on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.