Rhys Williams (31 December 1897 – 28 May 1969) was a Welsh character actor, born in Clydach in the Swansea Valley, who went on to build a long career in Hollywood film and American television.
Williams began his career on the Broadway stage during the 1930s and early 1940s, appearing in productions including Hamlet, King Richard II and Henry IV, Part 1. He made his film debut in 1941 in How Green Was My Valley, the John Ford drama about a working-class Welsh mining family that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Williams was the only Welsh member of the cast; he had originally been hired as a dialogue coach to help the American and English actors with their Welsh accents, before Ford gave him the role of Dai Bando in the finished film.
Over a career spanning nearly thirty years, Williams appeared in 78 films, working for major studios including MGM, Paramount, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox, in productions such as Mrs. Miniver (1942), Julius Caesar (1953) and Raintree County (1957). As television grew in America during the 1950s and 1960s, he became a familiar guest star on series including Perry Mason, Bonanza, Mission: Impossible, The Wild Wild West and The Andy Griffith Show.
Williams died in Santa Monica, California, on 28 May 1969, at the age of 71. He is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills.