William Caskey Swaim was born on January 11, 1947, in Lexington, North Carolina, to Carey Swaim and Anne Swaim, and had two older sisters and an older brother.
He attended Grimes Elementary School, Lexington Junior High School, and Lexington Senior High School, where he developed an interest in film and acting after watching On the Waterfront (1954) with his sisters.
Swaim was a huge fan of Elvis Presley and even used to do impressions of him at school and the local country club when he was ten and eleven years old.
At the age of seventeen, Caskey played minor roles in plays at the Winston-Salem Little Theatre, and after graduating from high school in 1965, he attended Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, as a liberal arts major for one and a half years.
However, his college studies were cut short when he was drafted by the army, and he served as a medic in Okinawa, Japan, for eighteen months.
After his tour of duty, Swaim returned home and worked a regular job in Lexington for about a year before moving to California with his new wife Kaye Smith in February 1971.
The couple rented an apartment on Burbank Boulevard in North Hollywood, and Caskey worked a night job at a convalescent hospital while pursuing an acting career in the daytime.
Swaim met an actor who informed him about the Film Actors Workshop sponsored by the G.I. Bill, and he studied acting with actor and acting coach Charles Conrad, working a second job as a hotel bellman.
Swaim's big acting break came after securing a minor role as a ranch hand in a stage production of "Of Mice and Men" at the Theater Craft Playhouse in Los Angeles, leading to a subsequent career in films and television.
