Keith David

Keith David is an American actor known for a deep, resonant speaking voice that has carried him through more than three hundred film, television, and animation roles. He was born Keith David Williams in Harlem, New York, in 1956, and grew up in the borough of Queens, the son of a personnel director and an executive assistant.

David studied at the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan, then trained in classical theater at the Juilliard School, graduating from its drama division in 1979. There he studied alongside Val Kilmer and built a foundation in stage performance that would later inform his film work.

His first major film role came in John Carpenter's 1982 horror film The Thing, in which he played the mechanic Childs. He followed it with a part as the soldier King in Oliver Stone's 1986 Vietnam War drama Platoon, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

From the 1990s onward David moved fluidly between live-action and voice work, voicing the gargoyle Goliath in Disney's animated series Gargoyles, narrating Ken Burns documentaries including Jazz and The War, and appearing in films such as Crash, There's Something About Mary, and animated features for Pixar and DreamWorks. He has won several Primetime Emmy Awards for his narration work.

The given name Keith is of Scottish origin, taken from a place name and surname that may derive from a Brittonic root meaning "wood" or "woodland." Long associated with the Clan Keith of northeastern Scotland, it became widely used as a first name in the English-speaking world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.