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Born on June 3, 1929, in Walthamstow (London), he left school at age 14, just after the war, and began working with his father, a newsreel and later documentary cameraman. He followed him for four years, including to East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, etc.) with the Colonial Film Unit. Billy Williams recalled that his father owned three 35mm cameras : a DeVry, a B&H Eyemo, and an Arri 2A with five lenses : a 28mm Schneider, 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm Zeiss, and a 125mm Astro Tachar.
After serving as a photographer in the RAF from 1947 to 1949, Billy Williams joined British Transport Films (like David Watkin and Robert Paynter), working as an assistant for five years. He then acquired his own camera gear (an Arri 2B with a set of Cooke lenses) to work as a cameraman for the Iraq Petroleum Company in Iraq and Syria.
Back in England in the early 1960s, he began shooting TV commercials, discovering and experimenting with diffuse light and color. It was also at this time that he met a new generation of directors such as Ken Russell, John Schlesinger, and Ted Kotcheff. His feature film career as a cinematographer really took off with them at the turn of the 1970s.
It was producer David Anderson, whom he met on commercials, who gave him his first chance as cinematographer in 1965 with San Ferry Ann, a wordless comedy in elegantly simple black-and-white that depicted the slapstick adventures of British tourists taking the ferry across the Channel to Calais.
The following year, Billy Williams made a radical shift with Just Like a Woman, the debut film of Robert Fuest, a painter and set designer by training. This color film was steeped in psychedelic influences and Pop Art, emblematic of London’s 1960s “Swinging” scene, with bold primary color palettes typical of the era.
Billy Williams landed his first major production in 1967 with Billion Dollar Brain, after Otto Heller, then 70, withdrew from the project, refusing to undergo a medical check for what was expected to be a grueling winter shoot in Finland. Ken Russell then called on Williams for this third installment of the Harry Palmer spy series (starring Michael Caine), following The Ipcress File and Funeral in Berlin, both previously shot by Heller.
After a less successful romantic comedy (Thirty Is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia), once again in the “Swinging London” vein, Billy Williams re-teamed with Ken Russell for what would become a kind of defining film and bring him his first Oscar nomination : Women in Love. The cinematography was boldly modern yet delicately stylized in its naturalism, echoing the work of contemporaries such as Jörgen Persson (Adalen 31), Conrad Hall (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), Vittorio Storaro (The Spider’s Stratagem), and László Kovács (Easy Rider). Despite the technical limitations of the time—Eastmancolor 5250 offered only 50 ASA—he explored varied lighting atmospheres, reserving the few reels of the new 5254 (100 ASA) film stock for the pond drowning sequence, shot over three dusky days. This forward-looking cinematography earned him his first Oscar nomination.*
He followed up with Sunday Bloody Sunday, directed by John Schlesinger, whom he had met on commercials. The director requested a more subdued, less flamboyant style than Women in Love to match the film’s more intimate and provocative bisexual love triangle storyline.
As his reputation grew—especially for lighting actresses’ faces—Williams was drawn into some international productions where originality was sometimes compromised by logistics or capriciousness of the starring actors. He worked twice with Liz Taylor (Zee and Co., 1972 ; Night Watch, 1973), and also with Ava Gardner (Tam Lin, 1970), Faye Dunaway (Voyage of the Damned, 1976), and Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett in Stanley Donen’s odd sci-fi Saturn 3 (1979). Fortunately, a few titles from the 1970s still stand out visually, such as Kid Blue by James Frawley (1973) and The Wind and the Lion by John Milius (1975)—a film Williams was especially fond of and in which he also had a small role as Sir Joseph, who is killed at the beginning !
Let’s also remember that in 1973, Williams shot the sun-drenched prologue in Iraq for The Exorcist (the main film being photographed by Owen Roizman, ASC).
The early 1980s marked Williams’ international consecration with On Golden Pond by Mark Rydell, earning him a second Oscar nomination, and then Gandhi by Richard Attenborough, which won him the Oscar in 1982.
It was on Vilmos Zsigmond’s recommendation—who was unavailable—that Rydell contacted Williams.
Rydell, perhaps influenced by his prior work with Zsigmond, wanted Williams to use heavy filters and pre-flash the film to create a softened, pastel look. Williams refused, occasionally using a low-contrast filter for faces and a polarizer. Challenges included lighting three major stars, managing the color and shimmer of Lake Squam (New Hampshire) backlight, and handling all interior scenes on location—day-for-night, dusk, or night—using large neutral gray panels (up to 6–7 stops of correction) on windows. He mixed Brute arcs and a few 4kW HMIs, carefully balanced using a color temperature meter. The work earned him another Oscar nomination, though he lost to Vittorio Storaro for Reds by Warren Beatty.**
Right after wrapping On Golden Pond, Williams flew to India for a nearly six-month shoot between November 1980 and May 1981. Suffering a herniated disc, he had to be replaced twice by Ronnie Taylor, for two four-week periods. Just as Women in Love had established a modern approach to cinematic lighting a decade earlier, Gandhi capped a career always attentive to naturalism and respectful of faces and colors : “Just capture the characters in their environment,” he said of On Golden Pond.
Well liked by actresses, he also had to deal with demanding stars, such as Faye Dunaway and Donald Sutherland on the set of Ordeal by Innocence (1984). The former demanded front lighting at all times, no matter her movement or position ; the latter flatly refused any close-ups below 40mm or even slight low angles. “I don’t understand it, but I have to make do with it,” he said with characteristic British calm.
Among his later works were two films with Peter Yates (Eleni, 1985 ; Suspect, 1987). He rejoined Ken Russell in 1989 for The Rainbow, a period piece based on D. H. Lawrence, before deciding to retire after The Custodian (Ronan O’Leary), shot in Ireland.
From 1996 onward, though he continued receiving offers, Billy Williams—then 67—devoted himself to teaching and passing on his knowledge.
Watching his films today, one sees how much he belonged to the same lineage as Sven Nykvist (whom he greatly admired), Pierre Lhomme, and Nestor Almendros. More than fifty years later, Women in Love remains strikingly modern and visually delightful.
* That year, his British colleague Freddie Young won his third Oscar for Ryan’s Daughter by David Lean.
** Competition was fierce : in addition to V. Storaro, nominees included M. Ondříček (Ragtime), D. Slocombe (Raiders of the Lost Ark), and A. Thomson (Excalibur) !
- A long interview split into 172 clips (each 1 to 5 minutes long) in which Billy Williams looks back on his entire career.
- Also see Reflections on Golden Pond .
- Read Richard Andry’s tribute, in French, to Billy Williams on the AFC website.
(Translated from French by Alexander B. Raiffe for the AFC)
