Michael K. Williams had the best parenting advice I’ve ever heard

Michael K. Williams was not only the kind of actor you couldn’t tear your eyes from – his portrayal of Omar Little in The Wire is one of the most spellbinding performances on television to date – but he was also somewhat of a sage. He had the unique ability to reflect on his own life, and the difficult circumstances he’d experienced, while also translating his own self-awareness to others – a rare and precious gift. He didn’t shy away from telling his truth.

Just look at the way the actor told The Guardian in 2015 how it had been difficult to adjust to fame after the success of The Wire, admitting he’d used his role as Omar “as a means of escape”. “Now I don’t use my job as a way to define me: it’s what I do, not who I am,” he said. “I have that understanding now.”

He followed that up in another interview by admitting Omar had become “an alter ego” – one he could hide behind. “He’s an outcast, and I identified with that immensely. Instead of using it as a tool to maybe heal myself, I hid behind that. Nobody was calling Michael in the streets. Everything was Omar, Omar, Omar. I mistook that admiration. It felt good. But it wasn’t for me. It was for a fictional character. When that show ended, along with that character, I was clueless about how to deal with that. I crumbled.”

He was also open about his battle with drugs, and about the circumstances that led him down that rocky path. We still don’t know what happened to him, the circumstances that led to his death at the all-too-young age of 54, but his legacy will live on – not least in his advice to himself, and to others.

One of the main influences he had on me personally was this standout quote about his younger self – and it’s probably one of the best pieces of parenting advice I’ve ever heard. In an interview last year with Men’s Health, Williams said: “I spent a lot of my younger years not feeling beautiful. When I look back at my pictures now as a kid, I’m like, ‘Damn, you were actually beautiful.’ I couldn’t see it back then. That’s a large thing that makes me go back to working with the youth in my community. I let them know that they’re beautiful.”

Williams, who founded and worked with youth organisations to tackle gun violence and improve relations between young people and the police, added: “One of the things I’ve been doing back in my community is instilling pride. By me showing up and walking around, I let them know that I still care about this community, that they still matter to me.”

And that’s it – that’s the ethos that I will try to emulate as a parent; that we should all try and emulate with our own kids and with young people all around us: we should tell them they are beautiful. Not just physically, of course, but inside-out. And it’s clear that his sentiment has struck a wider chord, judging by the response on social media to this tweet pointing it out.

“This Michael K. Williams quote is going to stay with me forever,” one person wrote. “Reading his interviews and he’s just profoundly vulnerable in every single one.”

That was the beauty in Williams: he wasn’t afraid to be real, to be vulnerable, to reveal himself and his flaws. He also wasn’t ashamed of sharing his regrets – such as what he wished he’d been able to tell his younger self about the way he looked, his power and potential.

Because that’s the thing, you see: when we tell children they’re beautiful – and we expand it to take on a wider, less superficial sense – we are also telling them they matter. We are giving them the Roald Dahl version of beauty, as he writes in The Twits: “A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”

We are telling kids that they may be small, but that they have the power to be – and to do – good. We are telling them, crucially, that they are seen. And we are telling them that they should believe in themselves, because we do (and if they do too), they have the power to change the world.

When I read Williams’s words, I think of this stunning poem by Maggie Smith, which carries a crucial message in its very last line: “Any decent realtor, walking you through a real sh*thole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.”

That’s the legacy Michael K. Williams leaves behind. He made the world more beautiful, inspired others to be beautiful – and will be beautifully missed.