William Devane
William Devane
William Joseph Devaneis an American precious metal salesman and film, television and theatre actor, known for his role as Greg Sumner on the primetime soap opera Knots Landing and as James Heller on the serial drama 24. He is also known for his supporting roles in films such as McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Marathon Man, and Space Cowboys...
ProfessionSoap Opera Actor
Date of Birth5 September 1937
CityAlbany, NY
children good herself originally reading wound wrote
And all of Laura's stuff, what they wrote originally wasn't as good and Constance wound up doing that herself. That was all her stuff, reading to the child, because she had children herself and that's what she would have done.
along alter begin care diplomatic knew mind pages realized shoot text
I didn't care about that because I'm not a diplomatic person to begin with. I just went along with things and did what I wanted to do because I knew they had to shoot their 12 pages a day. And when they realized that I didn't alter the text they really didn't mind what I did.
continuing creating enduring growth huge potential
Doing a continuing show like that, with the huge growth potential for the character, the possibility of creating an enduring character, it was great.
david guy instructed playing since staff supportive totally trust
David was the kind of guy who was totally supportive of the actors and instructed the writing staff to trust the actor's instincts, since after all, it's the actors playing the character.
knew red west wing
I knew with The West Wing that that wasn't going to be for very long, that I was just the red herring.
bottom eighth ends everybody good happening issue line loves raymond starts struggling writers year
The same issue is happening on a show like Everybody Loves Raymond now, which is in its eighth year and struggling to come up with good stories. It'll be interesting to see how they do. The bottom line is, it starts with the writers and ends with the writers.
eventually grow juvenile mature moving nice relationship took toward turn
It would have been nice for Greg to eventually grow into a mature relationship with Laura. He was moving toward that already but then took a turn into the juvenile with Paige.
came cast female mills senator shake year
Donna Mills came on the show as a female antagonist, about a year before, so now they wanted to have a male antagonist. I was cast as a Senator to shake things up.
certain dialogue hits scene until writers
So the writers would have the dialogue be a certain way until it got to the floor. Once the scene hits the floor, the actors are in charge.
anymore face interested moved playing work
And I'm not interested in playing someone 47 anymore and getting face work and everything else. I've moved on to grandfather roles.
stopping aging process
The business is built on slowing or even stopping the aging process.
actors terrible shows
Writers are not always right however, but then again, I've been on shows where the actors have complete control and change everything and it's terrible.
missing-you opera soap
A show like Knots or any other show that can be called a soap opera does terribly in syndication because if you're a viewer and you miss a week you don't know what's going on.
eye blue missing
Even though shows like NYPD Blue are soaps in my opinion, but they're individualized to an extent that you can still follow what's going on if you miss a week.