He played college football at the University of Southern California as a member of the 1989 Rose Bowl winning team.
In 2009, he had a supporting role as a brutish caveman tormenting Jack Black and Michael Cera in the motion picture Year One.
He also appeared in a season 7 episode of Malcolm In the Middle, as Crash, a recovering alcoholic, and had a small role in the 1993 Hong Kong action movie, Full Contact.
More recently he played One Eye, a Mexican drug dealer, in We're the Millers and Gregorek in NBC's series Grimm.
In 2019, Willig played a Black Satan gang member named Creep in Rob Zombie's film 3 from Hell.
He criticized "the complete hypocrisy that goes on with the Church, and their stance on gays", and that he had "evolved into feeling that equality and treating everyone the same is the utmost important thing".