General articles: Arts and culture
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Willa Cather
Willa Cather (Wilella Sibert Cather, 1873–1947), American novelist and McClure's editor from Red Cloud, Nebraska; wrote O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, Death Comes for the Archbishop; won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours.
Willa Fitzgerald
Willa Fitzgerald (born 1991, Nashville) is an American actress known for MTV's Scream: The TV Series, Reacher season 1, The Fall of the House of Usher, and her acclaimed lead role as The Lady in the 2024 thriller Strange Darling.
Willa Ford
Willa Ford (Amanda Lee Williford), American pop singer, actress, and interior designer; 2001 hit "I Wanna Be Bad" and album Willa Was Here; later WFord Interiors and Flip It Like Disick; comeback album amanda, 2026.
Willa Holland
Willa Holland (born 1991), American actress, voice actress and model, known as Kaitlin Cooper on The O.C., Agnes Andrews on Gossip Girl, Thea Queen/Speedy on Arrow for eight seasons, voice of Aqua in Kingdom Hearts, and lead of The Mortuary Assistant film.
Willam Belli
Willam Belli is an American drag queen, actor, and author who is known for the role of Cherry Peck in Nip/Tuck. He also competed on RuPaul's Drag Race in 2012.
Willard (1971 film)
Willard (1971), also known by its working title Ratman's Notebooks, is a Daniel Mann horror film starring Bruce Davison as a misfit who trains rats, including Ben and Socrates, to kill his tormentor, played by Ernest Borgnine.
Willard (2003 film)
Willard (2003) is a New Line Cinema horror remake directed by Glen Morgan, starring Crispin Glover as a misfit who trains rats, including Socrates and Ben, to take revenge; grossed $6.9M, Metascore 61.
Willard Van Dyke
Willard Van Dyke (1906–1986) was an American photographer and documentary filmmaker who co-founded Group f/64 in 1932 and directed film at the Museum of Modern Art.
Willehalm
Willehalm is an unfinished Middle High German verse epic by Wolfram von Eschenbach, composed around 1210–1220, retelling the wars of the Christian count Willehalm against the Saracens.
Willem Bilderdijk
Willem Bilderdijk (1756–1831) was a Dutch poet and lawyer, the leading figure of the early Romantic movement in the Netherlands, with more than 300,000 lines of verse.
Willem Claesz. Heda
Willem Claesz. Heda (1594–1680) was a Dutch still-life painter who spent his career in Haarlem and was one of the originators of the tonal, monochrome breakfast and banquet still life.
Willem Dafoe
Willem Dafoe (born 1955, Appleton, Wisconsin) is an American actor and Wooster Group co-founder; four-time Oscar nominee (Platoon, Shadow of the Vampire, The Florida Project, At Eternity's Gate) and Venice Biennale Theatre artistic director for 2025-2028.
Willem Dafoe filmography
Willem Dafoe filmography: screen career of the American actor (born 1955, Appleton, Wisconsin), from Heaven's Gate and Platoon through Spider-Man, Poor Things, Nosferatu, and the 2026 films Werwulf and Tenzing.
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), Dutch-born American Abstract Expressionist painter of the New York School, known for the Woman series, black-and-white abstractions, gestural landscapes, and a drawing practice that blurred drawing and painting.
Willem Elsschot
Willem Elsschot, pen name of Antwerp writer Alfons Jozef de Ridder (1882–1960), was a Flemish novelist and poet whose Kaas (Cheese, 1933) is the most translated book from Flanders.
Willem Jan Otten
Willem Jan Otten (born 1951, Amsterdam) is a Dutch poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist who won the P.C. Hooftprijs 2014 for essays on literature, morality, and belief.
Willem Kloos
Willem Johannes Theodorus Kloos (1859–1938) was a Dutch poet and critic, co-founder of De Nieuwe Gids and leading theorist of the Tachtigers, the Movement of Eighty.
Willem van de Velde the Younger
Willem van de Velde the Younger (1633–1707) was a Dutch Golden Age marine painter who moved to England in 1672 under the patronage of Charles II.
Willi Carlisle
Willi Carlisle is an American queer folk singer, poet, and multi-instrumentalist based in the Arkansas Ozarks, known for Peculiar, Missouri (2022), Critterland (2024), Winged Victory (2025), and the Tyler Childers-produced double album The Universal Bubba (2026).
Willi Ninja
Willi Ninja (William Roscoe Leake, 1961-2006), American dancer, House of Ninja founder, and star of Paris Is Burning who popularized voguing worldwide and inspired Madonna's Vogue.
William Abadie
William Abadie is a French actor from Saint-Raphaël, known as Antoine Lambert in Netflix's Emily in Paris (2020–2026), Tony in Sex and the City, Roman in Gossip Girl, and Denis Laurent in Greenland: Migration.
William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling
William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling (c.1567/1577–1640), Scottish poet, courtier, and Secretary of State for Scotland; obtained the 1621 charter naming Nova Scotia and devised its baronet scheme, but died in debt.
William Alwyn
William Alwyn (born William Alwyn Smith, 1905–1985), English composer and flautist, Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music; wrote five symphonies, about 200 film scores including Odd Man Out and The Fallen Idol, and archive at Cambridge.
William Apess
William Apess (1798–1839) was a Pequot writer, activist, and Methodist minister who wrote the first known book-length autobiography by an Indigenous North American and led the Mashpee Wampanoag self-government campaign of the 1830s.
William Ash (actor)
William Ash (Will Ash), English actor born 1977 in Chadderton, known for Chris Mead in Waterloo Road, Caleb Milligan in Emmerdale since 2022, Making Out, The Tunnel, Doctor Who, Mad About Mambo and Hush.
William Asher
William Asher (1921–2012) was an American television and film director and producer who directed 100 episodes of I Love Lucy and 131 of Bewitched, starring his wife Elizabeth Montgomery.
William Atherton
William Atherton (William Atherton Knight, born 1947, Orange, Connecticut) is an American actor known as Walter Peck in Ghostbusters and reporter Dick Thornburg in Die Hard and Die Hard 2, with a Carnegie-Mellon-trained stage career and 1970s leading roles.
William B. Davis
William B. Davis (born January 13, 1938, Toronto) is a Canadian actor, director, and acting teacher best known as the Cigarette Smoking Man on The X-Files, and founder of the William Davis Centre for Actors' Study in Vancouver.
William Baldwin
William (Billy) Baldwin, born 1963 in Massapequa, New York, American actor and producer, third Baldwin brother, known for Backdraft, Sliver, The Squid and the Whale, Dirty Sexy Money, and Northern Rescue.
William Basinski
William Basinski is an American experimental composer and video artist, born in 1958 in Houston, Texas, best known for The Disintegration Loops, decaying tape-loop recordings linked to September 11.