General articles: Arts and culture
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William Beckmann
William Beckmann (born 1995) is a Mexican-American country singer-songwriter from Del Rio, Texas, blending classic country, Americana, and Latin music; known for "Bourbon Whiskey" and the 2025 Warner Nashville album Whiskey Lies & Alibis.
William Bendix
William Bendix (1906–1964), American character actor with a thick New York accent; Oscar-nominated for Wake Island (1942), starred in Lifeboat, and played Chester A. Riley in radio, film, and TV versions of The Life of Riley.
William Blake
William Blake (1757–1827), English poet, painter, and printmaker of the Romantic Age; inventor of relief etching for his illuminated books (Songs of Innocence, Milton, Jerusalem); unrecognized in life, now canonical.
William Bludworth
William Bludworth (William John Bludworth, "JB") is the cryptic mortician of the Final Destination horror franchise, played by Tony Todd from the 2000 original through Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025), Todd's posthumous final role.
William Boyd (actor)
William Boyd (1895–1972), American actor born in Hendrysburg, Ohio, who played Hopalong Cassidy in 66 B-westerns from 1935, then bought the character's rights and became television's first cowboy hero and a merchandising pioneer.
William Boyd (writer)
William Boyd (born 1952, Accra, Ghana) is a British novelist and screenwriter, author of A Good Man in Africa, An Ice-Cream War, Any Human Heart, Restless, and the 2013 James Bond novel Solo, known for whole-life fiction and the Nat Tate hoax.
William Byrd
William Byrd (c. 1540–1623), also Birde, English Renaissance composer and Chapel Royal organist; Catholic recusant under Elizabeth I, holder of the 1575 Tallis printing patent, composer of three masses, the 109-motet Gradualia, and virginal music.
William Carleton
William Carleton (1794–1869) was an Irish novelist and short-story writer, born to a Catholic tenant farmer in Prillisk, County Tyrone, best known for Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry.
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963), American poet and physician of Rutherford, New Jersey; author of "The Red Wheelbarrow" and Paterson; dictum "no ideas but in things"; Pulitzer-winning modernist.
William Castle
William Castle (William Schloss Jr., 1914–1977), American B-film director-producer, the 'Abominable Showman' behind Emergo, Percepto, Illusion-O gimmick horrors like House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler, and producer of Rosemary's Baby.
William Cavendish, Earl of Burlington
William Cavendish, Earl of Burlington, also known as Bill Burlington, is a British photographer who founded Lismore Castle Arts in Ireland and is Chancellor of the University of Derby.
William Chan (陈伟霆)
William Chan (陈伟霆, Chan Wai Ting), Hong Kong singer, dancer, and actor born 1985; ex-Sun Boy'z member, solo debut Will Power (2008), mainland breakthrough via Swords of Legends (2014) and The Mystic Nine (2016), Emperor Entertainment artist.
William Chapman (poet)
William Chapman, born George William Alphred, was a French-Canadian poet and journalist (1850–1917) who published five collections and was a laureate of the Académie française.
William Christopher
William Christopher (1932–2016) was an American actor, not the journalist or other namesakes, who played Father Francis Mulcahy on M*A*S*H (1972–1983) and AfterMASH, and Private Lester Hummel on Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.; born Evanston, Illinois; died Pasadena, California.
William Congreve
William Congreve (1670–1729), English Restoration playwright and poet, master of the comedy of manners; wrote The Old Bachelor, Love for Love, The Mourning Bride, and The Way of the World (1700).
William Conrad
William Conrad (John William Cann, 1920–1994), American actor, director, and producer; radio's original Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke (1952–61), narrator of Bullwinkle and The Fugitive, and star of TV's Cannon and Jake and the Fatman.
William Cowper
William Cowper (1731-1800), English poet and translator of Homer, author of The Task and John Gilpin, Olney Hymns collaborator with John Newton, antislavery poet, pioneer of Romantic poetry.
William Cullen Bryant
William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) was an American poet and newspaper editor, known for the nature poem "Thanatopsis" and for editing the New-York Evening Post for nearly fifty years.
William Daniels
William Daniels (born March 31, 1927, Brooklyn) is an American actor, not the singer Billy Daniels: Emmy-winning Dr. Mark Craig on St. Elsewhere, voice of KITT in Knight Rider, and Mr. Feeny in Boy Meets World, married 75 years to Bonnie Bartlett.
William Davenant
William Davenant was an English poet and dramatist, Poet Laureate after Ben Jonson, who staged The Siege of Rhodes in 1656, generally regarded as the first English opera.
William David Powell
William David Powell (1925–1968), American television writer, story editor, and associate producer for Warner Bros. and Universal; only child of actor William Powell; credited on Bonanza, Rawhide, 77 Sunset Strip.
William De Morgan
William De Morgan was an English ceramicist and tile designer of the Arts and Crafts movement, and a close colleague of William Morris, who later became a successful novelist.
William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells (1837–1920) was an American novelist, critic, and editor of the Atlantic Monthly who championed literary realism; his major novels include The Rise of Silas Lapham.
William Demarest
William Demarest (Carl William Demarest, 1892–1983), American character actor of vaudeville, film, and TV; Sturges stock company regular, Oscar-nominated for The Jolson Story, and Uncle Charley on My Three Sons (1965–1972).
William Desmond Taylor
William Desmond Taylor, born William Cunningham Deane-Tanner, was an Irish-born American silent film director who made about 60 films for Paramount before his unsolved 1922 murder in Los Angeles.
William Devane
William Devane (born September 5, 1939, Albany, New York) is an American actor known as Greg Sumner on Knots Landing (1983-93), JFK in The Missiles of October (1974), and James Heller on 24 and 24: Live Another Day.
William DuVall
William DuVall, born 1967 in Washington, D.C., is an American singer-guitarist who joined Alice in Chains in 2006, after playing in Neon Christ and co-founding Comes with the Fall.
William Edmondson
William Edmondson (c. 1874–1951) was a self-taught American sculptor from Nashville, Tennessee, known for carving limestone figures and for his 1937 solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.
William Egginton
William Egginton is an American literary scholar at Johns Hopkins University known for books on Cervantes, Borges, and Kant, including The Rigor of Angels (2023).
William Eggleston
William Eggleston (born 1939), American photographer called the father of color photography; his 1976 MoMA show and William Eggleston's Guide legitimized color fine-art photography through saturated dye-transfer prints of the everyday South.