Bill Rice (actor)

William Rice (October 17, 1931 – January 23, 2006) was an American actor, artist, and member of the avant-garde art scene in Manhattan's East Village for many years.

Early life and education
He was born in Vermont and graduated from Middlebury College.

Career
After graduating from Middlebury, Rice moved into an apartment on Third Avenue in Manhattan in 1953. A painter, film actor, and an unaffiliated scholar, Bill Rice was one of the central figures in the various bohemian enclaves that gathered and overlapped in the Lower East Side of the 1960s. Among his diverse achievements, Rice worked with noted Gertrude Stein expert Ulla Dydo on Gertrude Stein: The Language That Rises: 1923–1934 (2003), an essential study of the author's writing process, using her notebooks and manuscripts.

Death
Rice died in Manhattan of lung cancer on January 23, 2006.

Works

 * by Bill Rice, Evocation I and Evocation II, BOMB Magazine (Fall, 1984)
 * by Bill Rice, Travel Sketchbook and Hamburg, 1982, BOMB Magazine (Winter, 1983)