Barry Williams

About Barry Williams

Barry William Blenkhorn (born September 30, 1954), known professionally as Barry Williams, is an American actor best known for his role as Greg Brady in the ABC television series The Brady Bunch.

Barry Williams was born in Santa Monica, California to Doris May Moore and Canadian-born Frank Millar Blenkhorn of English, Scottish and German ancestry. He decided as a very young child that he wanted to be an actor, and in 1967 he made his television debut in an episode of Dragnet. He played guest roles in That Girl, Mission: Impossible and The Mod Squad before being cast as Greg Brady in The Brady Bunch sitcom in 1969. As the eldest of the kids, his story lines often involved his many romances, and as the Greg character reached his mid-teens the show's producers began to groom and promote Williams as a teen idol.

With the show's demise in 1974, Williams was unable to attract the type of high profile roles that might have expanded on his earlier success. He resumed playing guest roles on television, and became involved in musical theater, touring with productions such as Grease, The Sound of Music and West Side Story, as well as making unsuccessful attempts to establish a career as a recording artist. However he was later able to capitalize on his type-cast of being "Greg Brady". Amid a procession of appearances in TV and movies that played up his famous teen role, Williams ended up landing a role that was quite a depature from the Brady state of mind, and that could have shaken off that image if the role was held longer: briefly in 1984, he was tapped to play English con man Hannibal, who conspired with Holly Sutton Scorpio (Emma Samms) on the top-rated General Hospital. Although the appearance was well-received, Williams was not asked back after his initial story arc was concluded.