William John Thomas Shockley was born October 16, 1989, in Danville, Kentucky to John Shockley and Renee Cummins, and has one younger brother, Tim Shockley, and a younger half-sister, Jamie Benedict. His father later died in January 2007. In July 2009, he married his girlfriend of a year, Brittany Allen and they are still happily married. He attended Eastern Kentucky University to pursue a degree in Business Marketing. He began to do small modeling projects and later became interested in film and acting. It was then that he began looking for an acting agency and signed with Heyman Talent Acting Agency in Louisville, Kentucky. He accepted a role in a small student film. But his first feature film was for one of his school friends and fellow actors in Memoribilia, a small hometown film. He moved on to do larger films such as Hell House, Please Try Again, and Killbillies.