William Daniels: Movies, Awards & Box Office

William David Daniels is an American actor whose career spans more than seven decades, making him one of the most recognizable character actors of the 20th and 21st centuries. Born on March 31, 1927 in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York, New York, he grew up as the son of a bricklayer and a telephone operator and was the middle child of three siblings. After being drafted into the United States Army in 1945, Daniels served as a disc jockey for an Army radio station in Italy, an experience that sparked his love for performance and led him to use the GI Bill to study drama at Northwestern University, where he graduated in 1949 and joined Sigma Nu fraternity. He made his Broadway debut the same year in Life with Father and quickly became a fixture onstage, earning an Obie Award for The Zoo Story in 1960 and starring in productions such as A Little Night Music and the original Broadway run of 1776. Daniels' screen career is equally distinguished; his film debut came in the anti‑war drama Ladybug Ladybug (1963) and he soon captured audiences as Mr. Braddock in the iconic 1967 classic The Graduate. He is perhaps best known for portraying three members of the Adams family—John Adams on Broadway and in film, Samuel Adams in television dramatizations, and John Quincy Adams in The Adams Chronicles. Television viewers will remember him as the sardonic Dr. Mark Craig on St. Elsewhere (two Emmy wins), the disembodied voice of the autonomous car KITT on Knight Rider, and the beloved schoolteacher George Feeny on Boy Meets World. From 1999 to 2001 he served as president of the Screen Actors Guild, guiding the union through the 2000 commercial‑actors strike. Married to fellow actress Bonnie Bartlett since 1951, the couple raised three children, two of whom were adopted after the loss of their first son. Even into his nineties Daniels continues to work, recently filming the role of King Henry VI for a new production of Richard III.