William December Williams Jr. (born April 6, 1937) is an American actor, novelist and painter. He has appeared in over 100 films and television roles over six decades. He is best known for portraying Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars franchise and has also appeared in critically acclaimed and popular titles such as Mahogany (1975), Scott Joplin (1977), and Nighthawks (1981), as Harvey Dent in Batman (1989) and The Lego Batman Movie (2017), The Last Angry Man (1959), Carter's Army (1969), The Out-of-Towners (1970), The Final Comedown and Lady Sings the Blues (both 1972), Hit! (1973), Fear City and Terror in the Aisles (both 1984), Alien Intruder (1993) and The Visit (2000).

Raised in Harlem, Williams made his Broadway theatre debut at age seven in The Firebrand of Florence (1945). He later graduated from The High School of Music & Art, then won a painting scholarship to the National Academy of Fine Arts and Design, where he won a Hallgarten Prize for painting in the mid-1950s. He returned to acting to fund his art supplies, including stage, films, and television. He continued painting; his work has since been shown in galleries and collections worldwide. Williams’ film debut was in The Last Angry Man (1959), but he came to national attention in the television movie Brian's Song (1971), which earned him an Emmy nomination for Best Actor. In the 1980s, he was cast as Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), becoming the first black actor with a major role in the Star Wars franchise. He reprised his role in subsequent Star Wars films and media. Williams's television work includes over 70 credits starting in 1966 including recurring roles over the decades in Gideon's Crossing, Dynasty, General Hospital: Night Shift, and General Hospital. Numerous cameos and supporting roles included being paired with Marla Gibbs on The Jeffersons, 227, and The Hughleys. Later work included voice acting in the series Titan Maximum (2009), and appearing on the reality show Dancing with the Stars (2014).

His work has earned him numerous awards and honors including three NAACP Image Awards, and the NAACP Lifetime Achievement award. He was inducted into the Black Filmmaker's Hall of Fame in 1984, and earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1985.

Early life and education

William December Williams Jr. was born on April 6, 1937, in New York City. He is the son of Loretta Anne (1915–2016), an elevator operator at the Lyceum Theatre and aspiring performer from Montserrat, and William December Williams Sr. (1909–1973), an African-American caretaker, with some Native American ancestry from Texas. He 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," (in The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976)). In March 1945, he made his Broadway debut at age seven portraying a page in The Firebrand of Florence, Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin’s operetta starring Lotte Lenya. He graduated in 1955 from the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan, where he majored in arts with a focus on visual arts. The school would later be the subject for Fame (1980), and its derivative television series. During art school he gained interest in the Stanislavsky Method—experiencing a role in contrast to representing it, to mobilize an actor's conscious thought and will to activate emotional response and subconscious behavior—and began studying at the Harlem Actors Workshop. Williams said the role was the one of which he was most proud "It was a love story, really. Between two guys. Without sex. ... It ended up being a kind of breakthrough in terms of racial division." Williams' success with Brian's Song earned him a seven-year contract with Motown's Berry Gordy. Motown paired the two of them again three years later in the successful follow-up project Mahogany. Williams returned to Broadway in the 1976 production, I Have a Dream, which was directed by Robert Greenwald. Williams portrayed civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. In 1977, he played the eponymous lead role in Scott Joplin, biopic of musician's life, featuring many of his ragtime pieces in the soundtrack, including an epic piano duel in the early opening scenes. Williams was cast as Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), becoming the first African-American actor with a role in the Star Wars series. Williams voiced the character in the audio drama adaption of The Empire Strikes Back (1983).

Between the two Star Wars films, he starred alongside Sylvester Stallone as a cop in the thriller Nighthawks (1981). Williams returned to Broadway in the August Wilson play Fences, as a replacement for James Earl Jones in the role of Troy Maxson in 1988. 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. He was set to reprise the role in the sequel Batman Returns, but his character was deleted and replaced with villain Max Shreck. When Joel Schumacher stepped in to direct Batman Forever, where Two-Face was to be a secondary villain, Schumacher decided to hire Tommy Lee Jones for the role. There was a rumor that Schumacher had to pay Williams a fee in order to hire Jones, but Williams said that it was not true: "You only get paid if you do the movie. I had a two-picture deal with Star Wars. They paid me for that, but I only had a one picture deal for Batman." Williams eventually voiced Two-Face in the 2017 film The Lego Batman Movie.

1990–present: Television roles

thumb|left|170px|Williams in 1997

Williams' television work included a recurring guest-starring role on the short-lived show Gideon's Crossing. He is also 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. Williams brushed off criticism—for the subtext of the ad campaign, 'works every time,' and the target audience—of the choice, "I drink, you drink. Hell, if marijuana was legal, I'd appear in a commercial for it." Colt 45 hired Williams "simply because he was so cool," and went from trailing behind Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company in barrels produced, to "skyrocketing" a year after the 1986 ads ran to two million barrels in the top spot for malt liquor. Williams was a cast member of Diary of a Single Mom, a web-based original series directed by award-winning filmmaker Robert Townsend. The series debuted on PIC.tv in 2009. Williams reprised his role as Toussaint on General Hospital beginning in June 2009. Also in 2009, 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. In July 2010, Williams appeared in the animated series The Boondocks, where he voiced a fictionalized version of himself in the episode "The Story of Lando Freeman".

In February 2011, 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. In February 2012, Williams was the surprise guest during a taping of The Oprah Winfrey Show spotlighting Diana Ross. Ross and Williams were reunited after having not seen each other in 29 years. In October 2012, 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. On January 9, 2013, Williams made a cameo appearance as himself on Modern Family, season 4, episode 11 "New Year's Eve". In 2014, Williams competed on the 18th season of Dancing with the Stars, a reality show/dancing competition partnered with professional dancer Emma Slater. The couple had to withdraw from the competition on the third week due to an injury to Williams's back. He also voiced Colonel Jackson in the 2016 video game Let It Die, who acts as the second major boss players face.

Over the years, Williams reprised his role of Lando Calrissian in four video games, The Lego Movie (2014), two episodes of Star Wars Rebels and multiple LEGO Star Wars animated specials. He later returned to the role in the Star Wars: Star Wars Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019), marking one of the longest intervals between onscreen portrayals of a character by the same actor in American film history. Episode IX director J. J. Abrams noted, "Lando was always written as a complex, contradictory, nuanced character. And Billy Dee played him to suave perfection, ... It wasn't just that people of color were seeing themselves represented; they were seeing themselves represented in a rich, wonderful, intriguing way."

Ventures and interests

Painting

In the late 1980s, Williams resumed painting, devoting much of his time to the work. It marked a turning point for him, returning home, and for him, the center of the art scene. Within a two-year span he "cranked out 120 original works of art".

Williams is the honorary chairman of Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz (formerly Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz) in Washington, D.C., which fosters jazz education. The institution has used his artwork each year for its competition programs since 1990. In 1999, they were displayed at the African-American Museum of Art, Culture and History in New Orleans, and in early 2000, the NASM in Washington, D.C.

He got permission from Star Wars creator George Lucas to sell lithographs of a montage of Williams' iconic character from the franchise, Lando Calrissian. The art angels were displayed for months then auctioned to raise funds for L.A. youth programs. Williams' work is included at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, and the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. They bought about eighty pieces which they put on their cruises and then auctioned off. In a September 2015 interview, he said he finds painting "cathartic" compared to collective film work, "When you're painting you just lock yourself up in your little private world. And it's all about you and your imagination and nobody else interfering with that. It's a great exercise because you really start discovering who you are and what you are without a lot of assistance … and the moment you come up with something interesting it's a success that’s really based on your own personal, private sensibility."

Music

In 1961, Williams recorded a jazz LP produced by Prestige Records entitled Let's Misbehave, on which he covered swing standards. The album was named after its second track. it included the first-ever vocal recording of "A Taste of Honey", a song by Bobby Scott and Ric Marlow later covered by The Beatles on their 1963 debut album Please Please Me. Through sales and plays of the song Williams and the other celebrities became platinum-recording and Billboard-charting artists. His first marriage was to Audrey Sellers in 1959. They were divorced some years later, after which he apparently became depressed. He stated that "there was a period when I was very despondent, broke, depressed, my first marriage was on the rocks." They had a son, Corey Dee Williams, born in 1960. In 1968, Williams married model and actress Marlene Clark in Hawaii. They divorced in 1971. He moved from New York City to California in 1971. In 1984, he bought a "Zen-like contemporary" home in the Trousdale Estates neighborhood of Beverly Hills, California; he sold it in 2012. He filed for an amicable divorce from Nakagami in 1993, but they reconciled, and were again living together by 1997.

Gender identity

In late 2019, Williams talked about his feminine side in an interview, and used masculine and feminine pronouns to refer to himself.

Williams was arrested on January 30, 1996, after allegedly assaulting his live-in girlfriend, whom the police did not identify. He posted a US$50,000 bail. L.A. Police said the woman had minor bruises and scratches. The district attorney's office filed misdemeanor charges of spousal battery and dissuading a witness. The woman later stated that the incident was her fault and hoped the police would drop the case. In a plea bargain, Williams agreed to undergo 52 counseling sessions. In a 2019 interview, Williams said he never slapped or abused women.

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|1981 || rowspan=2|Saturn Award || Best Supporting Actor || Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back || ||

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|1984 || Best Supporting Actor || Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi || ||

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|2002 || Black Reel Awards || Theatrical - Best Supporting Actor || The Visit || ||

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|2010 || rowspan=2| Indie Series Awards || Best Performance by a Guest Actor || Diary of a Single Mom || ||

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|2011 || Outstanding Supporting Actor || Diary of a Single Mom || ||

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|2003 || rowspan=2|TV Land Award || Most Memorable Male Guest Star in a Comedy || The Jeffersons || ||

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|2006 || Blockbuster Movie of the Week || Brian's Song || ||

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|2018 || Behind the Voice Actors Awards || Best Vocal Ensemble in a Feature Film || The Lego Batman Movie || ||

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Special recognition

  • 1984: Inducted into the Black Filmmaker's Hall of Fame.
  • 2000: Multicultural Motion Picture Association (Diversity Awards): Lifetime Achievement Honor

Books

  • PSI/Net (1999), , novel co-written with Rob MacGregor based on an actual government program of psychic spying

Explanatory notes

References

  • (archive)