Welcome to WILLIAM SADLER ONLINE @ williamsadler.org a website dedicated to American actor William Sadler. Best known for his various roles in differing projects, William has played everything from an anarchist military man in DIE HARD 2: DIE HARDER to a fireman seeking gold in TRESPASS, to a convict in THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, a soldier for God in TALES FROM THE CRYPT: DEMON KNIGHT, and a member of a secret organization inside The Federation in DEEP SPACE NINE. But his most 'infamous' role has been as the Grim Reaper/Death in BILL & TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY, AND BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC. William has many other film credits to his name including THE MIST, THE HOT SPOT, RUSH, THE GREEN MILE, KINSEY and many more. William has also become a staple in episodic television including as Sheriff Jim Valenti in the CW's ROSWELL and in HOMELAND, POWER, BERLIN STATION, THE COMEY RULE and lends his voice to the Comedy channel's OUR CARTOON PRESIDENT. William also has an extensive career on the stage in such productions as JULIUS CAESAR, 24 HOUR PLAYS, EXIT THE KING and many more. This site is dedicated to giving you the most up-to-date information on William's career. Do not expect candids to be posted as this site supports William's wishes for privacy. To read what will or won't be posted, feel free to read this site's Candids policy.
The last of Bill’s DS9 episodes. Here Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig), and Chief Miles O’Brien (Colm Meaney) seek to find out the cure for a Dominion disease that has infected Odo (Rene Auberjonois.) To do this they must travel inside Sloan’s mind to find his secrets. A great cat-and-mouse episode for Sloan, Bashir, and O’Brien. It should be noted here that Bill and Colm also starred in DIE HARD 2: DIE HARDER. Bill of course played Colonel Stuart, and Colm the part of the British Airways plane pilot whose plane Stuart causes to crash.
A wonderful article on Bill’s appearances in STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE making his nefarious character of Luther Sloan to be one of if not the most pivotal characters in the entirety of the franchise. Have to agree with them, though anything Bill is in is made better by his presence.
A Die Hard Bad Guy Was One Of Star Trek’s Most Game-Changing Villains
William Sadler played Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Sloan, who changed the franchise forever.
By Michileen Martin | Published 15 hours ago
There are some who say Star Trek has strayed far beyond Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the franchise, and those criticisms aren’t without merit. Honestly, they wouldn’t have been without merit decades ago. Long before Discovery, Strange New Worlds, or even the Kelvin Timeline films, Trek was going in directions that Roddenberry would–at the very least–have voiced concerns about. In particular, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine included a lot of elements Roddenberry may very well have balked at, including a multi-year serialized war story. Another thing that the Trek creator may have had a few thoughts about was DS9‘s introduction of Section 31: a covert agency operating outside all of the Federation’s laws and ideals, but often with full unspoken blessing of Starfleet’s upper echelons. The agency would go far beyond the boundaries of DS9 and–for better or worse–change the franchise forever. In part, we have William Sadler of Die Hard 2 fame to thank for that change.
William Sadler Outside Star Trek
When you see a movie about a cop from New York City who–purely by chance–winds up in an office building on the very night its occupants are taken hostage by heavily armed thieves, you wouldn’t necessarily think there’s a sequel or four in the mix, but that’s exactly what happened. Two years after the release of Die Hard came Die Hard 2, with Bruce Willis’s John McClane once again finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. This time he’s at Dulles International Airport waiting for his wife’s flight to land when the place is taken over by terrorists led by Colonel William Stuart, played by William Sadler. Stuart is just as cunning as Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber and–unlike Gruber–given the right set of circumstances he could probably push McClane’s face through the back of his head faster than you can say “fanatic.” Of course, since there were three more Die Hard films to come we know that right set of circumstances never arrived for Stuart. Luckily, Sadler got the chance to play a much more nuanced villain for Star Trek.
Sadler’s Die Hard 2 role isn’t the only one he’s known for, of course. As the white-faced Death itself, Sadler played an assortment of games–like Clue and Twister–against the heroes in 1991’s Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey and reprised the role for 2020’s Bill & Ted Face the Music. He was also the good-hearted but often complaining Heywood in 1994’s The Shawshank Redemption.
William Sadler Becomes Sloan, Head Of Star Trek’s Section 31
Star Trek has its share of “it was all an illusion” episodes, and one such beast was the Michael Dorn directed “Inquisition” in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine‘s penultimate season. We first meet William Sadler’s Sloan as a man claiming to work for Starfleet Intelligence. Sloan makes like he’s treating Doctor Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) with kid gloves, but we soon learn he believes the doctor is a mole for the Dominion who isn’t even consciously aware of it. After a tense drama in which it seems like everyone aboard DS9 has turned against Bashir, we learn it’s all a hologram and that Sloan works for the clandestine Section 31, which neither Bashir nor most of DS9‘s heroes have ever heard of. He’s convinced of Bashir’s innocence and actually tries to recruit the doctor. He appears twice more and, in spite of doing things that should have him thrown in prison or worse, convincingly portrays himself as a necessary evil working for the greater good.
There are a lot of things in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine that sometimes seem to have been utterly forgotten. In spite of commanding an army that–if it had ever had the opportunity–could have crushed the combined forces of the Federation, Klingon, and Romulan Empires, the Dominion has hardly been heard from since DS9 concluded. We don’t hear much about the status of Bajor or the (former? current?) Cardassian Empire. The Prophets have been quiet and Quark and his family have largely been relegated to a series of Easter eggs. But Section 31 has endured far beyond the closing moments of DS9‘s series finale.
In the prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise, we eventually learn that Malcolm Reed (Dominic Keating) joined and left Section 31 before serving under Captain Archer (Scott Bakula), and his old commanding officer coerces him into continuing to help the organization. Much later, in Season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery, the group is integral to the creation of the villain A.I. Control. In 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness, we learn the organization is thriving in the Kelvin Timeline. Peter Weller’s Admiral Marcus is a member, and has been secretly using that timeline’s version of Khan (Benedcit Cumberbatch) to fight a covert war with the Klingons.
In fact, there has been talk of a Section 31 Star Trek series in development for some time now, with Michelle Yeoh expected to lead the series as the Mirror Universe version of Philippa Georgiou and joined by Shazad Latif as the once Klingon-possessed Ash Tyler. There haven’t been a lot of updates about the series in the past year or so, however. If it does see the light of day, the series, along with all the other Section 31 stories in Trek, will in part have William Sadler to thank for his portrayal of what remains one of the franchise’s most interesting and enigmatic villains.
I just found this while doing a search on Youtube on Bill. Bill was interviewed Monsters, Madness and Magic. Here he discussed his early work in theatre as a young actor and his various projects on Broadway. He also discussed his most successful roles including DEMON KNIGHT, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, THE GREEN MILE, TRESPASS, BILL & TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY, BILL AND TED FACE THE MUSIC, DIE HARD 2, and THE MIST. I love when Bill talks about his stage work and his theatre days. He’s so humble and sweet. I’m sorry I haven’t been posting much, but I’m currently working on research for the novel I’m writing. I’m currently wading hip-deep in Russian history, The Vietnam War, and spaces in between
The website JoBlo has named its ten best streaming Christmas movies. And DIE HARD 2 was among them with honourable mention given to a certain nude Tai Chi lovin’ psychopathic killer we all know and love. Hint: Check this site’s subject. One of the clips they show is from the scene where John McLane (Bruce Willis) is in the cockpit of the plane Bill’s character Col. Stuart is shooting up into. Later McLane ejects the seat saving himself. I keep remembering a funny story Bill tells of filming that scene and making the sound of the machine gun, the sound mixer on the project, Tim Cooney, having to come and tell Bill he didn’t need to make the sounds. That’s what he was for.
3. Yes, Virginia, these ARE good sequels!: Die Hard 2 (1990), Bad Santa 2 (2016)
Christmas movie sequels don’t come around too often, let alone Christmas sequels that are actually good! Yet, some do exist and, for this list, I have TWO… Yes, Die Hard IS a Christmas movie, but what some may not quite comprehend is that its sequel is ALSO a Christmas movie… and surprisingly, a damn good one! You’d think John McClane fighting off terrorists a second time during Christmas would be asinine, yet somehow through Bruce Willis’s everyman charm and a wonderfully merciless main villain (played by William Sadler), the whole thing works! And… with Bad Santa 2, Billy Bob Thornton’s “Willie” picks up right where he left off, despite the thirteen-year gap between both films. All the dirty, potty-mouthed magic of the original is back with the new addition of the always-game Kathy Bates as Willie’s mama! Funny times!
Stream Die Hard 2 right now on HBO Max. Stream Bad Santa 2 right now on Amazon Prime.
There’s a story the great actor Harrison Ford tells of one of his first films called Dead Heat On a Merry-Go-Round from 1966, where he played the part of a bellboy. In his all but one minute of screen time he gave us a performance that rattled a studio executive so much, he had to vent his spleen on the actor. Harrison recounts it below:
“He called me into his office and said, ‘I want to tell you a story, kid.’ Kid, he always called me kid. He was about 15 minutes older that I was,” Ford began. “He said, ‘First time Tony Curtis was ever in a movie … he delivered a bag of groceries, a bag of groceries, kid. And you took one look at that guy, and you knew that was a movie star.'”
Ford fired back: “Well I thought that was supposed to be a delivery boy!”
The reason I recount this story is because like Harrison Ford, Bill Sadler has that everyman ability to play exactly what he’s been hired to play. In this case in this film Bill plays a car salesman named Don who tries to sell to film star Jim Belushi. Instead of playing something bigger Bill plays a car salesman. His ability to become whatever he’s asked is so fluid. Bill is a car salesman and not trying to be anything else in that moment but that. It proves what an actor Bill is because later that year he became The Grim Reaper/Death in BILL & TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY, then a few years later a terrorist in Col. Stuart in DIE HARD 2. That’s Bill Sadler. Whatever is asked of him, he brings it.
