Why Holly From Den Of Thieves Looks So Familiar

Lately, streaming audiences have been getting a charge out of Den of Thieves, the hard-boiled thriller that pits Gerard Butler's L.A. police detective "Big Nick" O'Brien against Pablo Schreiber's Ray Merrimen and his band of not-so-merry heist artists. The 2018 film didn't make the hugest box office splash during its theatrical release, but it's tightly plotted, has a crack cast, and features plenty of nail-biting action, which makes it perfect for a night on the couch with a giant bowl of popcorn.

The flick also sports several more familiar faces among its cast, like O'Shea Jackson, Jr. (the son and spitting image of Ice Cube) and Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson. Among the many bit players in Den of Thieves, however, is one who you may have found a little familiar: Holly, the girlfriend of former Marine-turned-Federal Reserve bandit Merrimen. The actress who plays Holly is named Meadow Williams, and if you've been wondering where you've seen her before, then we're reasonably certain that you have two things: A sharp pair of eyes, and a taste for B-movies. Williams' career in film and television stretches all the way back to the '90s, and she's long specialized in small roles in the type of fare that one might not necessarily describe as "highbrow." Here's why Holly from Den of Thieves looks so familiar.

Williams caught her first big break in 1991, when she landed a bit part in the Steven Seagal vehicle Out for Justice (she's credited as "Hooker," which we're pretty sure isn't her character's name). Her next role wasn't until 1994, as "Calendar Girl" in the little-seen thriller Turn of the Blade. Not long after that, however, she turned up in a few features which were of a decidedly higher profile.

Also in '94, she appeared as "Spider Rider" in Beverly Hills Cop III; the role was not quite as cool as it sounds, as the flick takes place largely in an amusement park, and Williams popped up as one of the people in line for a ride called the Spider. That same year, she appeared as "Pebbles" alongside Jim Carrey in The Mask, and in 1995, she landed the part of "Kim" in the single biggest film of her entire career: Apollo 13, the Ron Howard-directed dramatization of the ill-fated space mission of the same name. 

Williams would continue to work in features after that brush with four-quadrant filmmaking, often in unheralded, direct-to-video offerings playing parts like "Buxom Babe" and "Dancer." Later in her career, the roles would get meatier, though the films remained on the small side.

Also during the '90s, Williams worked early and often in television, first popping up in two separate roles in two different episodes of Murder, She Wrote in 1993 and 1994. She followed this up with a pair of bit parts on acclaimed HBO series, first appearing as Tina on a 1995 episode of Dream On, which was a fairly big deal at the time. HBO was still a few years from ushering in the Golden Age of Television with The Sopranos, but the cabler's original fare was already gaining a reputation for quality. Dream On was a quirky sitcom that ran from 1990 to 1996, and was created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, who would go on to create a little show called Friends. Williams also guested on The Larry Sanders Show, Garry Shandling's groundbreaking comedy, that same year.

Next, Williams showed up as a bikini-clad beauty pageant contestant on a 1996 episode of Married ... With Children, and in 1999, she guested on the sitcom NewsRadio, which made stars out of Andy Dick and Joe Rogan, and which was the final regular TV role for the legendary Phil Hartman. Williams went on to appear in a few episodes of Scare Tactics in 2003 but, other than those appearances, she worked nearly exclusively in features after the turn of the millennium. 

Writer-producer-director Gregori J. Martin is perhaps best-known for creating the long-running web soap opera The Bay, but he's also been at the helm of a respectable number of feature films, many of them produced in association with GruntWorks Entertainment, and several of which starred Williams and Steven Bauer, who portrayed Tony Montana's best friend, Manny, in Scarface. Williams first worked with the director on the 2008 thriller Jack Rio in the role of Andrea Shane and, that same year, she appeared in the major role of Casey Stevens in the nail-biter Skeletons in the Desert.

Martin obviously saw something he liked in the actress because, in 2010, he cast her in her first and only lead: The title role in his film Raven, playing a seductive and ageless female vampire alongside the likes of Dee Wallace and Weston Cage Coppola, the son of Nicolas Cage. Williams would again team with Martin for the indie thrillers Sebastian in 2011 and The Intruders in 2017, and the actress is credited as a producer on four of the five films (excluding Sebastian) in which she appeared for Martin.

Apart from her frequent teaming with Martin, Williams has popped up in a number of smaller features over the years — flicks that, despite not exactly setting the world on fire, afforded her the opportunity to appear on-screen with some absolute Hollywood legends. If you haven't caught any of the performances we've mentioned so far, then chances are that you recognize Williams from one of these movies, which include 2008's Light Years Away with Eric Roberts, Christopher Knight, Adrianne Curry, and Hal Linden; 2011's Mysteria with Danny Glover, Billy Zane, and Michael Rooker; 2013's The Harvest with Samantha Morton, Michael Shannon, and Peter Fonda; 2018's Backtrace with Sylvester Stallone and Matthew Modine; 2019's After with Selma Blair, Peter Gallagher, and Jennifer Beals; and 2019's 10 Minutes Gone with Bruce Willis and Michael Chiklis.

Williams isn't slowing down, either, and she has no fewer than three features either completed or in post-production, including Boss Level from The Grey director Joe Carnahan, with Mel Gibson, Naomi Watts, Michelle Yeoh, and Frank Grillo; Broken Soldier from director Matthew Coppola, with Sophie Turner and Ray Liotta; and Axis Sally, in which she'll have a major role opposite Al Pacino. This is not bad for a bit part, B-movie actress — one with quite a bit more talent and tenacity than that descriptor would imply.