By 
A squally London night in the winter of 2005. I am sheltering from the rain beneath a fire escape in a dank alley that runs down the side of the Odeon Leicester Square, in the company of some of the most famous people in the world — and their publicists. We are backstage at the Baftas, in a holding area for winners and presenters who have just come off stage: Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Helen Mirren, Anjelica Huston, Daniel Craig and, twinklier than any star in the sky, Lord Attenborough, Dickie as was.
Next to me, while I scribble snatches of elite-level badinage in my drizzle-spotted notebook, Greg Williams, the photographer, is taking pictures, capturing for posterity the Hollywood moments you don’t see on TV or in the tabloids: intimate conversations (Mirren on the phone to an absent Jamie Foxx, telling him he’s won Best Actor); high drama (Blanchett slightly sheepishly holding her trophy aloft); low comedy (Imelda Staunton flirting outrageously with Keanu Reeves); high-wattage charisma (Sienna Miller in diaphanous Alexander McQueen) and tragic hubris (your correspondent being hissed at by Scorsese’s representative for having the temerity to buttonhole the triumphant director of the night’s big winner, The Aviator.)
Greg Williams Photo Breakdowns: The Skills and Secrets Behind 100 Portraits
Outside the cinema, behind the velvet rope, in the pissing rain: the public, the paparazzi, and the press pack. Cameras, microphones, rictus grins, soggy shoes, collapsed umbrellas. Inside the bubble, in our dickie bows, just me and Greg, tonight’s chosen media representatives, observer-participants in the giddy, gaudy, high-strung awards-season circus.
“You want to photograph me here?” asks an incredulous Goldie Hawn, indicating the insalubrious surroundings of our sodden London passage.
Flash! goes Greg’s camera.
Greg Williams began his career as a war photographer, documenting conflict in some of the world’s most dangerous places: Burma, Chechnya, Sierra Leone. This might seem surprising, given he ended up as his generation’s Terry O’Neill, rather than its Don McCullin: our man in Hollywood, rather than our man in Hell. But it shouldn’t, really, because among the secrets to his great success — and in the 18 years since our night at the Baftas, he has been nothing if not successful — is that his approach to documenting the lives of the leading lights of showbiz is that of a great reportage photographer. He captures his subjects on the hoof, in motion, shooting fast and, if not always literally from the hip, then without the rigmarole and contrivance of the arranged celebrity sitting.
His aim, he says, is always to capture events as they happen — what Cartier-Bresson called “the decisive moment” — rather than to arrange a fabricated mise en scène and then photograph a subject in that setting.
“I try never to go into any situation with a preconception,” Williams tells me now. “Most of the time, I’m not creating a set in a studio and asking anyone to step into the light. I’m asking for a few seconds of someone’s attention, and trying to capture some of the energy of that moment. I’m a participant in the picture. I’m talking and walking towards the person, or they’re walking towards me, and I’m shooting as we approach. One thing I’ll say: I work very, very fast.”
Gradually, Williams’ combination of charm and chutzpah, not to mention his remarkable indefatigability, has earned him the role of court photographer to the upper echelons of the entertainment industry. Those flashbulb moments you recognise from backstage at the Oscars and the Golden Globes, the VIP areas in Cannes and Venice, and behind the scenes on film sets around the world? They’re Greg Williams photos.
A regular contributor to Vogue, Vanity Fair and, of course, Esquire, for which he has photographed cover stars including Daniel Craig, Tom Hardy and Idris Elba, Williams is also a phenomenal entrepreneur. From his studio-slash-gallery in London’s Mayfair, he directs a multimedia operation: films, campaigns for Hollywood movies (he’s done the past four James Bond posters), even product design (he worked with Daniel Craig on a limited-edition Leica Q2, and recently developed the G-Grip, an attachment that allows you to hold your phone like a traditional camera). He has more than one million followers on Instagram and publishes his own magazine, Hollywood Authentic. He also runs his own education platform, Greg Williams’ Candid Photography Skills, in which he teaches amateur photographers — in 2023, when constantly carrying a camera in one’s pocket is routine, that is most of us in the known world — how to get better results with their smartphones. (Close to 50,000 people have signed up to date, which means only seven billion or so potential subscribers to go.)
It’s this impulse to “democratise photography”, as he puts it, that informs Williams’ new book, Photo Breakdowns, a dazzling collection of photographs of the most celebrated performers of the day — some of which are reproduced on these pages — that also gives insights into how each composition was achieved, and tips and techniques into how the rest of us might arrive at similar results.
“Your smartphone is actually a really good camera,” Williams says. “And I shoot in the same way as most people: natural light, just me taking the photo, without a crew. So it’s really about passing on the skills I’ve learnt.”
Of course, his greatest talent is not so easily transferable. Whatever he does to win the trust of his subjects, paradoxically allergic to exposure as so many of them are, the secret ingredient that goes into his photos is clearly Williams’ own personality.
“I just photograph what is in front of me,” he says. The difference being that what is in front of him is Margot Robbie in her hotel suite, or Lady Gaga coming off stage, rather than my dog, or your kids, or a holiday sunset, or whatever it is that the rest of us choose to take pictures of.
What is it, I wonder, that so captivates Williams about famous people that he has elected to devote his career to taking their pictures?
“This is going to sound like bollocks,” he says, “but I promise you it’s true: I don’t care about celebrity. I care about talent. I think of my subjects as artists and collaborators, and I get to photograph and collaborate with some of the greatest artists of our time. These pictures are really co-authored by all the people in them.”
A final piece of advice for us less celebrated snappers? “Knowing when not to take a photo is important, too.” ○
‘Photo Breakdowns’ by Greg Williams (Whalen Studios Editions/Harper Collins) is out now. gregwilliams.com
