We have been advised over the years that it is best to compartmentalize when it comes to those involved in the arts — that while it is makes sense to savor that which an actor or author (or, let’s face it, even an athlete) produces, it is unwise to go too far in glorifying the person producing it.

Trust the art, not the artist — that’s the way it has often been expressed. It’s a takeoff on a quote attributed to D.H. Lawrence, an English author from early in the 20th Century: “Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of the critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.”

The point being that the foibles of the artist/actor/athlete are often one thing, the performance or work quite another. We can trust what they do, but not necessarily who we might perceive them to be.

Yet there are exceptions, few more notable than the actor Michael K. Williams, who died last week at age 54 (and whose funeral was held Tuesday in Harrisburg, where his mother has lived for years, having moved there from the Brooklyn projects where she raised her son). 

Williams’ signature role was that of Omar Little, a Baltimore street thug who robs only drug dealers, in the TV series The Wire (2002-08), and I daresay there is less separation between the man and the character than there might appear. While he was, unlike Little, neither violent nor ruthless, he had the same maverick tendencies. He literally sought to dance to his own drummer. And that, in time, made all the difference.

This was a guy who was working as a temp for Pfizer years ago, and as he told NPR’s Terry Gross in 2016, about to get a full-time gig with the pharmaceutical giant. Only he didn’t want that. He wanted to become a professional dancer; the first of the 110 acting credits listed in his IMDB profile is that of “shirtless man” in a 1994 Madonna video.

Then, at age 25, he got slashed with a razor in a bar fight, leaving a scar down the middle of his face — and another that ended “right at (his) jugular,” as he told Gross. But as he also told her:

“I refused to look at myself as a victim. I kept it moving. I didn’t allow myself to feel weak over that incident because I knew that, mentally, I didn’t have what it would have taken to really deal with what had just happened. So I didn’t mentally go there. They wanted me to seek, like, therapy for trauma. I shut all of that down. I said, no, I’m good.”

Should we be surprised that years later, after his scars led to a series of tough-guy roles, he played the ultimate badass in Omar? Should we be surprised that Little says things like, “You come at the king, you best not miss”? That he understands, better than most, that “a man got to have a code”?

Williams didn’t just play Omar; in many ways he was Omar, without the rough edges. (And understand that the character was inspired by a late Baltimorean named Donnie Andrews, who did in fact rob from drug dealers in his younger years. Much later — after doing prison time for a murder rap — he served not only as a consultant on The Wire, but played a member of Omar’s crew.)

Williams’ passing brings to mind the death in 2014 of another brilliant actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman, at age 46. Both were natives of New York State, though Hoffman hailed from the Rochester suburbs, not the Brooklyn projects. Hoffman also died of a drug overdose, and it is suspected that Williams did as well. And finally, Hoffman reinvented himself after an injury forced him to eschew athletics as a young man and turn to acting.

He won an Oscar in 2006 for his portrayal of author Truman Capote in the film Capote, but his catalog runs deep. As rock critic Lester Bang in Almost Famous (2000), he memorably tells the film’s protagonist, William Miller (Patrick Fugit), the following: “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.”

Williams was by his own admission uncool, at least early in life. He told GQ in 2020 that he was “frightened a lot of times growing up” and “had very low self-esteem and a huge need to be accepted.” 

Omar, he told NJ.com in 2012, became his “Superman suit,” giving him “better street cred than Mike Williams would ever get.”

That said, he was more like Omar than he might have realized. He was tough. He was adaptable. He was willing to zig when others might have zagged. Indelible character. Indelible life.