The movie Copycat ruined William McNamara's love life and his career

I dunno what his personality is like. But I would blame his looks before blaming that movie.

He was just about the hottest male specimen I had ever seen when I watched him in Dario Argento’s Opera.

I recently saw when he looks like now. Sad. Aging is cruel.

Could stand to lose a few.

I don't believe his narrative that one movie ruined his lovelife and career.

PS, his skin is in terrible shape. But he's still got a handsome face, which is also a bit off putting, in the eyes.

He sounds like a lot

I remember him from Doing Time on Maple Drive. He was a few years older than me, but the gay issue spoke to me a lot at the time. And he was pretty so that helped a little. I was in torment at the time, but the reasons were mostly my fault rather than my proper and decent family, all things considered.

Scene from the TV movie.

[quote]I don't believe his narrative that one movie ruined his lovelife and career.

But he played a killer. Nobody wanted to be around him afterwards.

LPSG reports that he has an extremely small cock.

Is he gay? Never married, no children, nothing. 60 years old.

He looks like Matt Damon left on a radiator

I guess he didn't kiss onscreen either.

Including the womanly ass, r13?

Garbage R11. This is what LPSG say about his cock:

[italic]"I have worked with Billy Mac in the last couple of years and I can attest that he is not only still stunning, but from the look of how he packs a pair of jeans, he's hung heavy and thick! Such an amazing actor and sweetest human ever! I keep hoping his new show "The Trouble With Billy" will take off. He's a prize! <3". [/italic]

I thought that Harry Connick Jr did that role.

Lend me a pair of yer squirrel covers. You know, your pan-tees.

R17 As memory serves, he was the original killer McNamara copycatted.

[quote] Is he gay?

Bisexual?

I was so hoping when I saw "Doing Time on Maple Drive", but if he is, he's not disclosing.

A friend who worked for Fox later told me that this movie (DTOMD) was really controversial at the time. I found that difficult to believe.

[quote]LPSG reports that he has an extremely small cock.

Who cares when he has/had an ass this delicious...

Looks like he aged-out of a sugar daddy's Palm Springs home and has to find work now.

Why hasn't Bibi Besch been elevated in the pantheon of DL saints?

I did extra work on that movie. It was filmed on Treasure Island in San Francisco. Sigourney weaver was giving a lecture in a hall when Billy was in the audience I believe. I was playing one of the students. I got all excited when the director was working with me personally and giving me blocking to cross in front of Sigourney in one scene, but they ended up scrapping it. Holly Hunter is in it as well. And I remember passing her in the hallway and congratulating her on her recent Oscar. She looked more startled by some stranger talking to her than appreciative. I guess I broke the “extra code” by talking to talent. I was only 19.

Extra life is a hodgepodge of sadness. You are the absolute bottom rung of anything going on on the set. I was there for two whole 12 hour days. I sat around the entire first day. The second day I got to work a bit. That year I did extra work on The Net with Sandra Bullock as well. filmed in San Fran around the same time. That I got a pretty good closeup in. It’s funny to see 19 you me (now 50), on the screen when that movie pops up on TV.

[quote]He was just about the hottest male specimen I had ever seen when I watched him in Dario Argento’s Opera.

FWIW his voice is dubbed by another actor in the English language version of the movie.

R22 are you saying he resembles a person like that, or that he is that person. He actually had a Palm Springs sugar daddy?

His ass is tiny too. Flat as a pancake.

[quote]I did extra work on The Net with Sandra Bullock as well. filmed in San Fran around the same time. That I got a pretty good closeup in. It’s funny to see 19 you me (now 50), on the screen when that movie pops up on TV.

What scene are you in? I've seen that movie dozens of times. One of my guilty pleasure/comfort movies

R24, didn’t you say you were in the scene where everyone is standing outside after Angela pulls the fire alarm?

He tracks his own IMDB star rating…enough said.

R20 I remember it well. It *was* controversial. It was a made-for-TV movie that dealt with gay themes during the middle of the AIDS crisis, when everyone wanted to be quiet about anything gay-related. It was one of the few gay-themed movies that didn't have a plot involving a gay character dying, but instead explored the theme of coming out.

It was well done. McNamara was excellent in it, as was Jim Carrey, who played McNamara's loser brother.

Doing Time on Maple Drive felt like a pilot for a potential series. Kind of an early, more dramatic version of Brothers & Sisters (sorry, The Sally Field Program.) Not surprising as it was directed by Thirtysomething's Ken Olin. Bibi Besch played the hateful cunt of a mother so well I can't watch her in anything without instantly loathing her. Jim Carrey did a great job in the first dramatic role I saw him do. McNamara was so beautiful but I had a crush on Philip Linton who played his straight best friend. Linton was actually gay and died from AIDS before the movie even aired. Very sad.

R24, post a screen cap!

r3 Great link

Just watched "Copycat" yesterday on the Criterion Channel. Already I can't even remember him in it.

He was some generic white guy who got blown away by Holly Hunter, who's laughably miscast anyway (as was Weaver as an OTT hysteric).

r11 Great link

I think he looks better now than Christopher Atkins.

Bibi Besch was the daughter of Austrian actress Gusti Huber. Gusti was linked to several prominent Nazis. Which is kind of ironic because she ended up portraying Edith Frank in the 1959 film THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK.

R38 - That made me look her up. Samantha Mathis is Bibi's daughter.

Bibi had about a 5-minute cameo in "Tremors." She and her husband were two of the first victims of the giant underground worms.

I liked him in Beggars and Choosers. It was a good series that I thought ended too quickly. Can’t believe it was on 25 years ago.

Wrath of Khan!

I’ve seen Copycat a few times and don’t remember him at all. I do remember him in crazy ass Sherilyn Fenn’s Liz Taylor movie.

I saw him in a restaurant in Malibu eating by himself a couple of years after Copycat came out. He ordered two pancake breakfasts and ate them both.

The first date I ever had with another man was dinner and a movie. We saw COPYCAT. I was so nervous that I don’t even remember the movie.

He was so creamy in Doing Time on Maple Drive. I wanted to go back to my early 20s and be boyfriends with him. Thought he'd have a huge career by playing WASPy young men in suits or medical uniforms, with a sexy-pouty vulnerability, not serial killers.

If Ted Levine could work steadily and have a decent career after playing Buffalo Bill I buy this guy's whining.

This feels like a story you tell yourself when you career starts to hit the skids.

It looks like he worked pretty steadily for several years after Copycat - although I don't know how large the film roles were. But he was also doing television.

A lot of different things could have happened - he could have had a drug problem, maybe had a bad run-in with someone - or he simply aged out of his good looks and was in that middle period between young pretty boy and distinguished leading actor.

Once again - his credits show that he was working - just not at the level he had anticipated? Los Angeles is chock-full of broken dreams or limited careers - thousands and thousands and thousands of actors are in this same boat.

Young Billy looked so much like Ricky Nelson with that impossible mop of thick hair.

Supposedly, they wanted to make a sequel but by that time Jim Carrey had become a huge star and he wouldn't even allow them to use any shots of him from the original movie in the sequel.

I didn't get the sense from reading this article that McNamara is whining about Copycat or blaming the movie for ruining his career. I think he's just explaining how that role altered his career trajectory and that it was surprising to him how that one role changed how he was perceived.

He seems truly grateful that people are re-discovering the movie and praising his performance.

The film grossed $32 million in the US and $79 million worldwide on a $27 million budget. That's not some wildly successful film.

I completely forgot about this film (never saw it in the first place) - but I don't think there were soooo many people who watched this and then it impacted his career.

A lot of people play killers and they are fine. This film just wasn't big enough to upend things for him.

Sounds like this was the biggest film he was in and he went back to middle-budget and smaller films afterwards like his career was prior to this film.

R41, I *loved* Beggars & Choosers. WEHT to Charlotte Ross? She got NYPD Blue based off of Beggars & Choosers (it was popular in the industry and she stole every scene) but she totally vanished after that.

There is no way that Copycat was worse for his career than Chasers.

I remember seeing Cooycat in theaters in ‘95 and being surprised that McNamara was in a project with A listers. He already seemed fairly washed at the time.

[quote] But he played a killer. Nobody wanted to be around him afterwards.

Harry Connick Jr played a killer in the same movie and I don't think he lost any of his female fan base. In fact, he gained a whole new gay fan(me!) after I saw the film for the first time. When he had Sigourney Weaver's character trapped in the bathroom and licked the blood off of his knife, I think I fell in love in real time. Harry had never looked so hot on screen.

As for William, I remember his character well since I've seen Copycat multiple times, but I don't remember ever finding him hot like I did Harry. His character was weird and creepy, and he was dating or living off of some older woman while keeping his victims tied up in the basement. I have never seen him in anything else, and he didn't really stand out amongst the cast in this movie. I guess I can see why it ruined his love life, but it might be a personality issue as well. Who knows? Not everyone can be like Harry Connick Jr .

I thought I remembered reading he had addiction issues at some point but I don't see any gaps in his imdb resume so if he did he handled them well. He's worked very regularly since the late 80s.

Never been married - 60 years old - a very scant dating profile, usually short-term with other celebs.

Perhaps it's because he's gay and he didn't want to do the faux romance stuff for tabloids to take it to the next level.

There are thousands and thousands of out of work actors in LA. He was working.

Now - only a few get a lot of fame. So are you in it for fame or for acting work because you love your craft? For a lot of the beautiful actors - life has been easy for them and I feel like they're more in it for the fame than for actual acting.

Then they do this period of wanting to do 'serious acting work' because they know they look shallow. But they were never really in it for the sake of acting.

They've been told they're special and beautiful (and they are) their entire lives, so of course they should become stars!

[quote]I recently saw when he looks like now

He does have a blank look about his eyes… a bit unsettling.

Are there any straight famous people of a certain age who remain single? Right now I can only think of Tracee Ellis Ross.

R48 is that Hollywood kill buzz Nathanael West..

Willie boy could have subbed in for William Atherton. He coulda been a stag, in the remake.

star*

Remember him telling a story when Viagra was new and young guys were just trying it and he did and his hard on wouldn't go down. He had to go to the emergency room and they gave him a shot in his dick to get it down.

Everybody was terrific in "Doing Time on Maple Drive" including future pre- Jailbird Aunt Becky as his girlfriend.

Young Billy had a Robert Chambers quality about him. Chilling.

His hair did it.

R32, I didn't know that about Linton. Poor guy.

He wore a toupee r66

I loved COPYCAT in the theater and have enjoyed it many times since then. I think Weaver, Hunter and Mulroney are all excellent in it. It's also the best screen work Harry Connick, Jr. has ever done (although for his peak screen hotness I think you need to check out LITTLE MAN TATE; I seem to remember a scene with him wearing just a towel).

McNamara was just right for his COPYCAT role, but the idea that this was some major talent whose career was sidelined is pretty ludicrous to me. His particular brand of cute didn't age well, and I don't see that he ever brought much else to the table that a thousand rivals couldn't match.

He definitely gives “entitled frat boy date rapist” vibes.

He showed cock on screen in some movie he did.

He was easy to look at in The Brylcreem Boys.

Looks like a fat Amy Adams there.

[quote]A friend who worked for Fox later told me that this movie (DTOMD) was really controversial at the time.

It was quietly controversial, and not just because I remember sneaking off to watch it as a kid.

Prime time TV networks just didn't air things like this in 1992 especially during the height of the AIDS epidemic. There were only a handful of tv movies that ever came out that dealt with this kind of thing before it like "That Certain Summer," "A Question of Love," and "Consenting Adults." William was at the 25th anniversary talk about it with some other members of the cast for the WGA.

For perspective, Ellen's coming out episode didn't even happen until 1997.

R73 overreacting from the 2020s

Oy vey!

For perspective, Ellen's coming out episode didn't even happen until 1997.

For further perspective, it was seen as overactive preening even then.

Brylcreem Boys? Is that a porno?

COPYCAT is a fun film.

I remember towards the end when Weaver is up on the roof and raises her handcuffed hands above her head and goes, "Boogaboogaboo!" or something acting crazy.

Practically the entire theater broke out in laughter.

[quote]overreacting from the 2020s

“Overreacting from the 2020s” is wild considering how rare it was in 1992 to see a gay character on network TV who wasn’t a punchline, a corpse, or a one-off.

Doing Time on Maple Drive didn’t need to be loud to be radical. Sometimes the quiet stuff hits harder especially when it wasn’t supposed to exist in the first place.

But hey, oy vey, I guess.

R78 - you forgot killer - gays were punchlines, corpses, bizarre psychotic killers or one-episode characters for 5 minutes.

His mentor was Roddy McDowell? Um, gay, gay, gay... And Magic 8 Ball says (screams, in f act) BOTTOM...

He was engaged to Erika Eleniak for a couple of years before breaking up. I remember that. They costarred in the film Chasers around the same time.

I was molested.

I recall him being quite good in [italic]Radio Inside[/italic], but barely remember him in [italic]Copycat[/italic]. Movies like [italic]Chasers[/italic] and [italic]Aspen Extreme[/italic] were more typical of his career.

R78 your mileage varies. Thanks.

It was nine years into the crisis…hardly earth-shattering tv.

R81 wasn’t Erika Eleniak also engaged to Billy Warlock?

Sounds like being engaged to Erika is a tick in the “gay” column

Xanadu ruined my career but you don't see me crying about it.

Billy Warlock isn’t gay.

He was super fucking hot. Fine, smooth ass, hot bod. But he was a bad actor. That's why his career derailed. Not because he was too "edgy." That's funny.

He played Jeff Bridges' hot stud son in The Last Picture Show sequel Texasville who was bangin' all the moms in town.

Also he played Monty Clift in the Sherlyn Fenn Liz Taylor made for TV bio pic.

R28, R29 is correct and I am surprised that he remembers that. I have posted it before. At that age it was just cool to see people like Sigourney Weaver and Sandra Bullock working up close. That’s 19yo me to the right in the suspenders. I am the other black poster besides Teackse, ha!

R90 you're cute!

Looks like you got a nice chest under those suspenders.

R90 was serving Urkel realness!

JK. You look cute!

The character he played in Natural Enemy was much worse than the one he did in Copycat. But apparently nobody saw it (except me). Both about the same time.

This is a nude frontal still of him in the unreleased "The Trouble With Billy." A little blurry because he's bounding toward the bed but looks to have not a very big dick.

He sounds nuts.

[quote] Billy Warlock isn’t gay.

He just liked cock.

R90, I also used to do some extra work. Imagine my surprise when I found a photo of myself here in the background of a pic of an actor who got some DL attention.

I liked that movie where Jodie Foster commits statutory rape with him.

While Wikipedia doesn't show any wife for McNamara

AI says "William McNamara is married to Nicole McNamara (also known as Nikki Dunn McNamara). She is an environmental sciences teacher. They married in November 2012 in Praia do Norte, Nazaré, Portugal."

Ai is full of shit, in case you hadn’t noticed?

Still has the BJ lips in R6.

I call him Billy Mik-na-Mar.

r6, maybe too much sun and alcohol, unfavorable genes (his light complexion) not enough sunscreen and moisturizer. But he's 60 freakin years old and has earned it! Still has a beautiful head of hair and a Hollywood smile. He seems like a nice guy, but sadly, I get zero gay vibe from him.

R94 doesn’t work.

R94 - yeah, can't see the full pic once clicked (at least for me).

[quote]This is a nude frontal still of him in the unreleased "The Trouble With Billy."

Love the fact that he, Mackenzie Astin, and Billy Campbell all managed to do full frontal scenes at some points in their career. They were pretty much everyone I grew up with a crush on.

Low threshold

So it seems that Billy Campbell is heterosexual. He just prefers to be single.

Not in Asstails in the City.

—Beauchamp Day

Does he still lead a ragtime band?

I totally believe that a single role can banish you from Hollywood, having NOTHING to do with being difficult or an awful person.

Well, at one point in time, Katherine Hepburn was considered "Box Office Poison," but she managed to turn it around, and that was back in the 1930s.

Fred Astaire, Marlene Dietrich and our dear Joan Crawford were also on that infamous list, r112.

By 1938, they were all simply having career lulls, just getting their second winds.

R111 hold my beer..

He sounds and looks like an addict or alcoholic to me.