William Caskey Swaim was born on January 11, 1947 in Lexington, North Carolina. The son of Carey Swaim and Anne Swaim, Caskey has two older sisters and an older brother. He attended Grimes Elementary School as well as both Lexington Junior High School and Lexington Senior High School. Swaim first developed an interest in film and acting as a child after his sisters took him to see On the Waterfront (1954) at the Carolina theater and was hugely influenced by Elvis Presley (Swaim used to do impressions of Presley both at school and at the local country club when he was ten and eleven years old). At age seventeen Caskey played two minor roles in plays at the Winston-Salem Little Theatre. Following graduation from high school in 1965, Swaim went on to attend Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, North Carolina for one and a half years as a liberal arts major.However, Caskey's college studies were abruptly cut short after he was drafted by the army. In the wake of serving eighteen months as a medic in Okinawa, Japan, Swaim returned home from his tour of duty in 1969 and worked a regular job in Lexington for about a year to save money. Caskey married Kaye Smith and then moved to California with his new wife in February, 1971. The couple rented an apartment on Burbank Boulevard in North Hollywood. During this time Caskey worked a night job at a convalescent hospital while pursuing an acting career in the daytime. Swaim eventually met an actor while visiting Universal Studios as a tourist who informed him about the Film Actors Workshop that was sponsored by the G.I. Bill. Caskey studied acting with actor and acting coach Charles Conrad and worked a second job as a hotel bellman. Swaim's big acting break occurred after he secured a minor role as a ranch hand in a stage production of "Of Mice and Men" at the Theater Craft Playhouse in Los Angeles. A subsequent career in films and television followed soon thereafter.