Every young standup comic knows that the road to riches and stardom -- a regular gig on a network sitcom -- is seldom smooth. It typically takes years for a performer to find a comfort zone on the stage, and to establish a viable persona that audiences love and bookers want to hire. Five years is considered the norm, but it can be longer.
The norm, however, does not seem to apply to Harland Williams. Now 42, the former Torontonian has been a comic hit virtually from the moment he first stepped on stage, more than two decades ago at Yuk Yuk's.
His likeable, quirky, slightly Hicksville image has made him a fixture on the late-night talk-show circuit and the comedy clubs of North America, while his acting talents have been featured in more than a dozen Hollywood films, including There's Something About Mary and Dumb and Dumber.
"When I got into this, I was willing to work for five years without a paycheque," Williams said recently. "I knew it would be a hard process because it's competitive, but things went well for me. Within two years, I was headlining in Toronto, and once I jumped to [Los Angeles] things started to happen just as quickly."
Now, Williams is ratcheting up the star profile to another level. This week, he embarks on a five-city theatre tour of Belleville, Ont.; Toronto; Ottawa; Montreal and Halifax. Outside of a few appearances at Montreal's Just for Laughs Comedy Festival, which is sponsoring the tour, it marks his first major return to Canada since moving to Los Angeles almost 17 years ago.
And there is bigger news: Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks has announced that Williams has been signed to write and direct a new animated feature. With the working title Route 66, it's a road picture with a cast of wild and eclectic characters.
Elated though he is, Williams says he is not totally surprised. "Even from my first time on stage in Toronto, I saw the bigger picture," he said. "I always visualized Canada as a training ground, to get to where I wanted to be. You know, they used to say, 'If you want to make cars, go to Detroit. If you want to make steel, go to Pittsburgh.' And if you want to make movies, TV and comedy, L.A. is where they do it."
Before he did his first standup routine, Williams flew to Los Angeles just to stand outside Mann's Chinese Theatre. Gawking at the handprints of famous stars, he says, he promised himself, " 'Some day, I'll be back here.' It was not a question of if, but when. Somehow, I just had this inner knowledge, a kind of vision thing. It's been very comforting to me, because I've seen how the business can make people insecure. But I never worried. Everything unfolded the way I knew it would."
Williams's life is in many ways a reaction to the conventional, middle-class existence he knew growing up with four sisters in Willowdale, in Toronto's suburban North York. It was a life, he says, out of American Beauty. His father was a lawyer who became Ontario's solicitor-general. His mother was a marriage counsellor and travel writer.
"I grew up literally in the shadow of North York General Hospital," he said. "From my bedroom window, I could see that neon purple smoke stack. I was the only kid in North York living in a Blade Runner world."
The setting was so ordinary that Williams felt he needed "a life opposite -- one that was less predictable, that might lead to many different paths."
In school, however, he never aspired to class-clown status. "That tended to go the John Belushi types, the masters of the obvious. I'd come chugging in after and try to top them with something more clever."
At one point, his father suggested Williams might want to become a priest -- he had attended a Catholic private school. Later, they tried to get him a job at a muffin store.
Instead, he chose comedy, and while he was a fan of many comedians, he chose not to model himself on any one performer. "I hope it doesn't sound too self-absorbed, but I tried not to have comic influences, because then they would influence what I did. I admired Ellen DeGeneres, Steven Wright and Steve Martin in the early days, but I wanted to create my own vibe."
His own vibe is to be "a little quirky. I try to do the unexpected, so the audience doesn't know where I'm going. But I also like to surprise myself. I'll launch into things I've never done, like I'll start singing or talking in an accent, or touching someone's hair. It's a bit of Forrest Gump. It gives the likeability, which is important for me.
But the persona, he says, is simply an aspect of his real self. "If we went out for a fun night on the town, that's the Harland you'd get. It's just a side of me that you don't always see."
He says his writing process occurs on stage. "I never sit at a computer. I've never written a joke down. I just go on stage and work them out and if it doesn't work, try another method. When you're staring at blank faces, you're forced to find something funny."
Williams now lives in the Hollywood Hills, just up the block from some of the Sunset Boulevard comedy clubs where he performs. "I'm looking over all the madness, all the drive-bys," he says.
He receives a regular stream of scripts and loves doing movies as much as stage work. Films are like "sweet, warm, burning embers -- lasting gems inside me, I love every one of them. Standup is sparks flying out and exploding -- it's fast and immediate and energetic. Both bring me immense joy."
He is excited about his new writing/directing gig for Spielberg's partner, Jeffrey Katzenberg. But again, he says, he is not surprised.
"Even back in my 20s, I said that by my early 40s I wanted to be directing films. It's that vision thing again. I just knew it would happen."
Harland Williams will perform at the Empire Theatre in Belleville, Ont., tonight, the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto tomorrow, the Centrepointe Theatre in Ottawa on Friday, Bourbon Street West in Montreal on Saturday, and the Dalhousie Arts Centre in Halifax on Sunday.