First, Thom Williams wanted to make bad guys pay for their mistakes. Then, the Denton High School graduate decided it was more fun to play bad guys on the big screen - and the small.

Williams, who graduated from Denton High in 1992, was a mere handful of credits away from leaving the University of North Texas with a perfectly respectable degree in criminal justice - not to mention a minor in psychology - in 1997.

Then he packed it up and left for California.

"He called me one day," said Williams’ mother, Rory Williams, recalling the summer he spent in Los Angeles with the "Batman" stunt show onto which he’d been recruited. "He called and he said: ‘You know? These courses at UNT aren’t really grabbing me.’ That’s when we knew he wasn’t coming back. I remember asking him: ‘You aren’t coming back, are you?’ It wasn’t even really a question. I knew the answer."

Rory Williams owns a Curves outlet, a fitness center that caters to women, and her husband, Roy Williams, works as a driver for a trucking company.

Thom Williams got his stuntman break when the former Bronco football player-turned-UNT cheerleader got a summer job at Six Flags Over Texas in 1996. He coached the three stuntwomen playing Catwoman. Williams said he was to refine their tumbling skills and keep them sharp. One day, Williams said, the director of the show approached him with the question that would change his life.

"It was the day after I got the coaching job at Six Flags, the director saw me tumbling. He came up to me and told me he didn’t like one of the actors he was working with and if I would be interested in doing his part. He saw me tumbling and knew I could do the work," Williams said.

Since then, Thom Williams has worked to become a marketable figure. He’s studied martial arts, stunt driving and still relies on the foundation of his training: stunt shows. Williams eventually played Mr. Freeze in the Six Flags "Batman" stunt show. The director who recruited him to the Dallas show invited Williams to do the Los Angeles show. The stunt show circuit trained Williams to fight, fall from high spots to the ground and more. He said he took to it easily, probably because of his gymnastics and football background. Since he’s been in the business, he’s trained in stunt driving and motorcycle work.

"I knew this is what I wanted to do for my career when I started doing it," he said. "I was lucky to be in the live shows, which are hard to get into."

Roy and Rory Williams said they are proud of their son.

"I couldn’t stop him," Roy Williams said. "I was the same way. Two weeks out of school, I told my family, ‘See ya.’ I was always a strong believer that you don’t do what you don’t want to do. I was never a big believer in doing something you don’t like and being miserable."

The couple has gotten used to seeing their son on the screen, though Roy Williams said the first time they saw him on the big screen, they attracted attention.

"Thom was in the movie The X-Files. He played a military guardsman and he was standing behind the Cigarette-Smoking Man. We went to see the movie, and there are all these other people in there and she [Rory Williams] yells: ‘There he is!’"

Rory Williams insists she wasn’t that loud.

"I whisper-yelled," she said, laughing. "I didn’t really yell."

Rory Williams said she has benefited from her son’s proximity to the beautiful people - literally.

"My soap is The Bold and the Beautiful," Rory Williams said. "That is my all-time favorite. It just so happens that a while back, Thom was the stuntman who beat up Ridge during the time he was abducted. Thom invited us out to a taping of the scene where he was beating him up. The fists were flying everywhere. I went with Thom’s godmother. We just acted like a couple of college girls."

The lantern-jawed Ridge Forrester is Rory Williams’ favorite character, and she has a photo of Ronn Moss, the actor who plays the fashion magnate, with her son hanging in the hallway of her Denton home. That hallway has become a sort of shrine to Thom Williams’ achievements. He’s photographed with various actors on several shows he’s worked on.

Williams follows a disciplined training schedule and diet to stay in fighting form. He lifts weights, "a lot," he said, and has a cardiovascular regimen as well. He’s recently begun to study yoga, which the stuntman calls "a real workout." He also appreciates the calming effect of yoga, he said.

He works with a nutritionist to maintain his weight.

"The smallest I can get to is about 225 pounds," Williams said. "I hover around 230 and 240. I get yelled at if I lose too much weight. There actually aren’t a whole lot of people in the business who are my size."

Many stuntmen are smaller and leaner, Williams said.

Also, "I’m always the bad guy," Williams said.

He doesn’t mind. Playing bad guys is part of the job, but stunt professionals have great training; Williams has body slammed stuntwomen who are a mere 5 feet tall and half his weight. Stuntmen and women have good insurance; and visits to chiropractors, acupuncturists and sports medicine specialists are covered, he said.

As for getting cast as terrorists and nabbing roles for Arabic characters, Williams said he owes his olive coloring and dark hair to his mother’s Mediterranean heritage.

Stuntmen and women have to audition for speaking roles. He auditioned for and got the role of a Klingon in Star Trek: Enterprise, the latest permutation of the classic sci-fi television classic. The work required some of the same painstaking makeup sessions he had on the cult television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, its cult spin-off. In both shows, he played demonic monsters looking for a fight.

"During one job on Angel, the mask I had to wear [Williams played a rather nasty demon-type monster] wasn’t right, so I couldn’t see one of the eye holes. I basically had to do the fights to counts. With the one eye, after they’d stop us, I’d see a bottle of Gatorade my buddy was holding up in front of me. Well, it wasn’t my buddy. It was James Marsters. He was handing me my Gatorade between takes. I thanked him and he said: ‘Well, your buddy is over there working on something.’ Real nice guy."

Williams said he enjoyed getting beat up and killed by the star of ABC’s Alias, Jennifer Garner.

"She’s a really sweet girl. During one fight scene, she turned the wrong way and her kick made contact," Williams said.

The star was immediately contrite, he said.

"She said: ‘Oh, no. I turned the wrong way. I’m sorry.’ I told her that it was all part of the job. She does her own stunts. She’s really professional. She has a stunt double, but I’ve never fought her. I’ve only fought Jennifer Garner. Some actors want to do their own stunts, and others don’t. Sometimes, an actor will tell you: ‘Hey, look, I’ve got a bad back and bad knees. You’re going to have to do all the work here.’ I actually prefer that. I’m trained to do that."

This year looks to be pretty busy, he said. As for the future, Williams said he plans to continue working, but wouldn’t mind getting more involved in stunt coordination.

"And fire," he said. "I haven’t done a whole lot of work with fire. I’d like to do more."