Celebrity Photographer Greg Williams Takes Us Behind the Lens of 10 Photos

A former war photographer who now enjoys unprecedented access to top talents ranging from Brad Pitt and Daniel Craig to Kate Winslet and Ana de Armas after a red-carpet assignment changed everything, celebrity photographer extraordinaire Greg Williams has a new book that reveals the stories surrounding 100 of his most revealing images. In addition to the behind-the-scenes stories, Greg Williams Photo Breakdowns: The Stories Behind 100 Portraits also contains techniques, tactics and skills that Williams has accumulated throughout his years of shooting on set and backstage at the Golden Globes, BAFTAs and Oscars. Here, in Williams’s own words, are the stories behind 10 images from the book, including shots of Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett and Lady Gaga. (Some of the excerpts have been edited for length.)

“This is Kate Winslet standing in the ocean, and it’s definitely one of my favorite pictures from the last couple of years. We’re not a long way from where she lives, and we went for a walk down the beach. It was very much her idea. I wanted to get her in the sea, but I’d imagined a long sandy beach, nothing like this violent and powerful scene. We both loved the fact that back in the day, this would have taken hundreds of assistants, fashion assistants, special effects crews, people would have brought extra wave machines to make sure it was wavy enough. But here we just did it. Her husband was helping me — I even had to borrow his wellies. Compositionally, she’s framed perfectly by the breakwaters, one-third across the frame.”

“I’ve shot Cate Blanchett many times over the years, having first met her on the set of Elizabeth in 1997. We were in Cannes and I had shot her in a few different scenarios and got some good pictures, but as soon as I left, Cate’s daughter started playing under her Mary Katrantzou dress, and it was such a sweet, genuine moment that she called me back, and the photo just happened from there. I probably went back in that room for no more than a minute, shot the picture, saw this one of her laughing, and showed it to her. She loved it, and that was it, done.”

“I took this photo of Lady Gaga the second she walked offstage at the Oscars in 2019, after she won Best Original Song for ‘Shallow’ from A Star Is Born. There were a lot of photos from that night of Gaga looking really emotional and happy, but none quite like this. It is a crop. The shot originally was wider. I couldn’t get quite as close as I wanted to get because there were other photographers next to me. If I’d wanted this picture, I would’ve turned the camera on its side and been a little closer, but it is such a better photo for the crop. This was captured before there was any composure at all. What you see is absolutely raw unbridled emotion, relief, pride — she’s genuinely overwhelmed. And I think at events like this, it is very rare to see someone showing such raw emotion. If I’d waited for her to compose herself, this picture wouldn’t exist.”

“Here’s Bill Murray on the set of Fantastic Mr. Fox, a stop-motion animation directed by Wes Anderson. I was only on set for a day. Bill and I were walking around the set and I got him to lie down in this sort of Lilliputian frame, which references Gulliver’s Travels. He’s doing nothing; he looks like he’s asleep, like this giant has had the biggest night out and has fallen asleep in a little village. There aren’t a lot of photos of mine that I have framed at home. But this is one of them because it’s a picture I keep looking at. It makes me chuckle every time I see it.”

“I took this picture of Daniel Craig as they were filming Casino Royale. Daniel is standing there holding the gun and he’s got his sunglasses on, which will be removed before delivering the iconic ‘Bond, James Bond’ line for the first time. What I really like about this picture is how you can see the whole crew at work. The white reflector puts Daniel into a frame within a frame, which draws the eye to him.”

“I shot this picture of Willem Dafoe at the Venice Film Festival. I had a very short amount of time with him. We were in this hotel courtyard, which was very pretty but it didn’t really offer anything. Willem said, ‘I get it. It all looks great, but it’s not what you want.’ So we looked for something to do. And there was this little fountain and he said, ‘Oh, I can play with this.’ So he started playing with the water, flicking the water up at me. He completely soaked my trousers, so at the end of it I looked like I peed myself. But anyway, he’s throwing this water up in the air, and this is where you get happy accidents. He probably did it twenty times: splash, splash, splash. And this is the one picture that by far outshone all the others.”

“This is another shot of Cate Blanchett at the 2020 Venice Film Festival. There is no special lighting going on here. It’s nothing but the sun. She’s literally looking up and I’m probably on my tiptoes asking her to move her head so the sun lands perfectly on her face.”

“I took this photo of Robert Downey Jr. on the back lot at Universal Studios, where there are all these different areas. I think it was between Ancient Rome and Western Street. Robert’s on a bike and he’s riding all over the place. He’s a real proper old-school entertainer. A hugely, hugely talented man with extraordinary energy — if you’ve never seen Chaplin, then it’s worth watching to see the sort of technical, physical performer he is. We were having lots of fun with him playing different characters. And we had this gun, because we’d done some shots of him bursting out of sets, doing rolls, doing dives, jumping around.”

“This picture of Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara was taken on Oscar night, just after Joaquin had won Best Actor for Joker. The story in this picture, for me, is a love story. You have two people that clearly adore each other and who, despite their great fame, are really quite down-to-earth and at their happiest in each other’s company. There’s an authentic cuteness to Rooney’s Converse trainers. She’s taken off her high heels and she’s got her ball gown on still, but she’s wearing Converse. And there they are just chomping down on these vegan burgers. The idea behind this image was that Joaquin and Rooney wanted to use Joaquin’s Oscar win and the attention that it brought to highlight veganism, a cause very close to both of their
hearts.”

“I shot this when Olivia Colman was promoting The Crown. As with a lot of my favorite pictures, the shoot was kind of over. We’d bought all these crowns for the shoot and she was like, ‘Oh my God, my daughter would love them.’ I told her to take as many as she liked. Then she stuck one on her head, and then she stuck another one on her head, and I’m just laughing, encouraging her. And she keeps going, stacking these things up. I wasn’t taking pictures when she was
stacking them. But as it was getting better and better, I’m going, oh my God, this is the photo. Once I lifted my camera, the whole moment was over in seconds.”

In Greg Williams Photo Breakdowns: The Stories Behind 100 Portraits, Williams, whom InsideHook previously spoke with in 2021, emphasizes the importance of using photography as a means to show the person behind the personality, with a focus on authenticity, believability and imperfection.