Cable was a standout football player for North Hollywood High School as an offensive tackle, and became a varsity captain in his senior year.
From 1970, Cable was a model for COLT Studio Group, a producer of gay male erotica and pornography, where he was photographed by Jim French.
[5] He was also photographed by Tommy Marshall, Ray Allen, Robert Scott Hooper, Dave Sands, Jeff Dunas and for Playgirl by David Meyer, Raul Vega and Mr. Blackwell.
His best-known role was as rock star Johnny Boz in the Paul Verhoeven erotic thriller Basic Instinct (1992), where he is memorably murdered in the opening scene, mid-coitus, with an ice pick.
In October 1996, Cable was involved in a motorcycle accident in Laurel Canyon in which he sustained a fractured vertebra in his neck, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down.
The William Laurence Cumpanas Fund[37] was established after his death, supporting the Croatian Fraternal Union Lodge 170 in Merrillville, Indiana.