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AWARDS DATABASE
All of the winners, all of the nominees, all of the awards shows.
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EMMY AWARDS 
Tyler James Williams, "Everybody Hates Chris"
AN ACTOR since he was 4, Tyler James Williams took the role of the young Chris Rock at age 12, in CW's "Everybody Hates Chris." Now 15, Williams finds the role comes so naturally he has no sense of needing to get into character.
Even when he began playing the part, certain aspects were second nature. Just like his character, he has two younger siblings (who are also both actors), and he's all too familiar with the responsibility of being the oldest kid. But unlike with the real Rock, the funny didn't come easily at first. "I was the boy who booked the dramas, and my little brothers booked the comedy," he says, "So it was funny that I would get Chris." His brothers were only too willing to help him with the role. "They're my biggest critics," he says. "They'd sit down and watch the show in the first couple seasons, they'd be like, 'Ty, stop smiling, you know it was funny but stop.' " It was a challenge for him, especially the first couple of years. "I was working with people who had been in comedy forever," he points out, "and I'd never been in such a setting where they were coming up with new lines, and improvising, and doing all these things on the fly, so I had a hard time keeping a straight face." Williams credits costar Tichina Arnold, who plays his mother, with curing him of his crack-ups. She would get behind the camera while he was filming and try to make him laugh on purpose, to cure him of the habit. It worked. Williams finds that the comedy comes more easily for him now as well. "When I first started, I wasn't really trying to be funny or anything, and now it's like things are coming to me out of nowhere," he says. "That happens with anybody, from doing comedy for a long period of time, you just grow in it." He doesn't have to worry about getting too caught up in the celebrity aspect of his work; his family makes sure he doesn't get a big head. "Yeah, that's not happening," he says. "One thing that I know, always try to hang out with people that were there before the show. There are definitely people I've met since then who are really cool, but if I'm going out, I'll be with family, and they kind of keep me normal. Because as soon as you get caught up in the whole 'I'm this and I'm that,' that's when you start to lose it."
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