Billy Dee Williams appeared as Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars franchise, first in the early 1980s for The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and 36 years later in The Rise of Skywalker, marking one of the longest intervals between onscreen portrayals of a character by the same actor in American film history.
58 Facts About Billy Dee Williams
2.
Billy Dee Williams continued painting; his work has since been shown in galleries and collections worldwide.
3.
Billy Dee Williams has appeared in at least 70 films over six decades including critically acclaimed and popular movies such as Lady Sings the Blues and Mahogany, both starring Williams and Diana Ross, and Nighthawks.
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Billy Dee Williams voiced Lando in video games, animated series, and the National Public Radio adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back.
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Billy Dee Williams was inducted into the Black Filmmaker's Hall of Fame in 1984, and earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1985.
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Billy Dee Williams's work has earned him numerous awards and honors including three NAACP Image Awards, and the NAACP Lifetime Achievement award.
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Billy Dee Williams used to go to Central Park to see the Negro league players and the Cuban baseball league, "They were fantastic, and I wound up working with a lot of those guys,".
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Billy Dee Williams has a twin sister, Loretta, and they were raised by their maternal grandmother while their parents worked several jobs.
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Billy Dee Williams's mom had studied opera for years, becoming an accomplished opera star who wanted to break into movies; the family was richly cultured, exposing the children early on to drawing, painting, theatre and similar creative experiences; Billy Dee would remain a fan of the arts including opera.
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Billy Dee Williams's first Broadway theatre "big break" was a play, A Taste of Honey.
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Billy Dee Williams continued to struggle as an actor for ten years working as an extra, doing small and large theatre, and "slowly breaking into television and film".
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Billy Dee Williams first appeared on Broadway in 1945 in The Firebrand of Florence.
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Billy Dee Williams returned to Broadway as an adult in 1960 in the adaptation of The Cool World.
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Billy Dee Williams appeared in A Taste of Honey in 1960.
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Billy Dee Williams made his film debut in 1959 in The Last Angry Man, opposite Paul Muni, in which he portrayed a delinquent young man.
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Billy Dee Williams was frustrated in the 1960s with the "paucity of parts for leading black men," the majority of roles he wanted went to Sidney Poitier.
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Billy Dee Williams rose to stardom after starring in the critically acclaimed television film Brian's Song, in which he played Chicago Bears star football player Gale Sayers, who stood by his friend Brian Piccolo, during Piccolo's struggle with terminal cancer.
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Billy Dee Williams became one of America's most well-known black film actors of the 1970s, after starring in a string of critically acclaimed and popular movies, many of them in the "blaxploitation" genre.
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Billy Dee Williams was cast as Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back, becoming the first African-American actor with a role in the Star Wars series.
20.
Billy Dee Williams has voiced the character in the 2002 video game Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, the audio dramatization of Dark Empire, the National Public Radio adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back, two productions for the Star Wars: Battlefront series, The Lego Movie, and in two episodes of the animated TV series Star Wars Rebels.
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Billy Dee Williams co-starred in 1989's Batman as district attorney Harvey Dent, a role that was planned to develop into Dent's alter-ego, the villain Two-Face, in sequels.
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Billy Dee Williams is known for his advertisements for Colt 45, a malt liquor, for a five-year period starting in the mid-1980s; he would reprise his spokesperson role in 2016.
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Billy Dee Williams was paired with actress Marla Gibbs on three situation comedies: The Jeffersons ; 227 ; and The Hughleys.
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In 1993, Billy Dee Williams made a guest appearance on the spin-off to The Cosby Show, A Different World, as Langston Paige, a grumpy landlord, in a backdoor pilot for his own series.
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Billy Dee Williams appeared as himself on Martin where he provided Martin Lawrence's character with advice on getting back together with Gina.
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Billy Dee Williams made a special guest appearance on the hit sketch comedy show In Living Color in 1990.
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Billy Dee Williams portrayed Pastor Dan in an episode of That '70s Show.
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Billy Dee Williams made a cameo appearance as himself on the television series Lost in the episode "Expose".
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In February 2006, Billy Dee Williams guest starred as himself in the season 5 episode "Her Story II" of Scrubs, where he plays the godfather of Julie.
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Billy Dee Williams played Toussaint Dubois for General Hospital: Night Shift in 2007 and 2008.
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Billy Dee Williams reprised his role as Toussaint on General Hospital beginning in June 2009.
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Also in 2009, Billy Dee Williams took on the role of the voice of Admiral Bitchface, the head of the military on the planet Titan, in the Adult Swim animated series Titan Maximum.
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In July 2010, Billy Dee Williams appeared in the animated series The Boondocks, where he voiced a fictionalized version of himself in the episode "The Story of Lando Freeman".
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In February 2011, Billy Dee Williams appeared as a guest star on USA Network's White Collar as Ford, an old friend of Neal Caffrey's landlady June, played by Diahann Carroll.
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In February 2012, Billy Dee Williams was the surprise guest during a taping of The Oprah Winfrey Show spotlighting Diana Ross.
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Ross and Billy Dee Williams were reunited after having not seen each other in 29 years.
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In October 2012, Billy Dee Williams appeared as a guest star on NCIS in Season 10 Episode 5 titled "Namesake", as Gibbs's namesake and his father's former best friend, Leroy Jethro Moore.
38.
On January 9,2013, Billy Dee Williams made a cameo appearance as himself on Modern Family, season 4, episode 11 "New Year's Eve".
39.
Billy Dee Williams returned to New York to star in August Wilson's play Fences, replacing James Earl Jones in the lead for four months starting in February 1988.
40.
Billy Dee Williams renewed his friendship with Peter Max, who had trained and sold art in the city, and renewed Williams' interest in painting.
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Billy Dee Williams is the honorary chairman of Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz in Washington, DC, which fosters jazz education.
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Billy Dee Williams had his first solo exhibition in 1991, followed by many throughout North America, and, later, the world.
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Around 1992, Billy Dee Williams, inspired by his friend and fellow New York artist Peter Max who had a teapot collection, started a cookie jar collection.
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Billy Dee Williams got permission from Star Wars creator George Lucas to sell lithographs of a montage of Williams' iconic character from the franchise, Lando Calrissian.
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Billy Dee Williams was commissioned for another set of Disney paintings to be unveiled in 2011 at Disney's D23 Expo, in Anaheim, California.
46.
In 1961, Billy Dee Williams recorded a jazz LP produced by Prestige Records entitled Let's Misbehave, on which he sang swing standards.
47.
Billy Dee Williams was the first to sing the song in the US, on the Broadway stage with Joan Plowright as part of the original Broadway production of the play A Taste of Honey.
48.
Billy Dee Williams voiced Lando Calrissian in the video game Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Star Wars Battlefront as well as the spin-off Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron.
49.
Billy Dee Williams voiced Lando Calrissian in 2015's Star Wars: Battlefront for the DLC pack Bespin and its 2017 sequel Star Wars Battlefront II.
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Billy Dee Williams was a cast member of Diary of a Single Mom, a web-based original series directed by award-winning filmmaker Robert Townsend.
51.
Billy Dee Williams has been married three times, and has three children, and two grandchildren.
52.
In 1968, Billy Dee Williams married model and actress Marlene Clark in Hawaii.
53.
Billy Dee Williams moved from New York City to California in 1971.
54.
Billy Dee Williams married Teruko Nakagami on December 27,1972.
55.
Billy Dee Williams filed for an amicable divorce from Nakagami in 1993, but they reconciled, and were again living together by 1997.
56.
Billy Dee Williams was arrested on January 30,1996, after allegedly assaulting his live-in girlfriend, whom the police did not identify.
57.
In late 2019, Billy Dee Williams talked about his feminine side in an interview, and used masculine and feminine pronouns to refer to himself.
58.
Media outlets speculated that Billy Dee Williams might be gender fluid, but he clarified that he was referring to anima and animus: the feminine side of men and the masculine side of women in Jungian psychology.