What Have We Here?: Portraits of a Life (Unabridged)
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
A film legend recalls his remarkable life of nearly eight decades—a heralded actor who's played the roles he wanted, from Brian’s Song to Lando in the Star Wars universe—unchecked by the racism and typecasting so rife in the mostly all-white industry in which he triumphed.
Billy Dee Williams was born in Harlem in 1937 and grew up in a household of love and sophistication. As a young boy, he made his stage debut working with Lotte Lenya in an Ira Gershwin/Kurt Weill production where Williams ended up feeding Lenya her lines. He studied painting, first at the High School of Music and Art, with fellow student Diahann Carroll, and then at the National Academy of Fine Art, before setting out to pursue acting with Herbert Berghoff, Stella Adler, and Sidney Poitier.
His first film role was in The Last Angry Man, the great Paul Muni’s final film. It was Muni who gave Billy the advice that sent him soaring as an actor, “You can play any character you want to play no matter who you are, no matter the way you look or the color of your skin.” And Williams writes, “I wanted to be anyone I wanted to be.”
He writes of landing the role of a lifetime: co-starring alongside James Caan in Brian’s Song, the made-for-television movie that was watched by an audience of more than fifty million people. Williams says it was “the kind of interracial love story America needed.”
And when, as the first Black character in the Star Wars universe, he became a true pop culture icon, playing Lando Calrissian in George Lucas’s The Empire Strikes Back (“What I presented on the screen people didn’t expect to see”). It was a role he reprised in the final film of the original trilogy, The Return of the Jedi, and in the recent sequel The Rise of Skywalker.
A legendary actor, in his own words, on all that has sustained and carried him through a lifetime of dreams and adventure.
Cover Credits:
Cover photograph: Courtesy of Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC
Cover design by Jenny Carrow
COURTESY OF LUCASFILM LTD. LLC
STAR WARS: The Empire Strikes Back (c) & TM Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Actor Billy Dee Williams has been charming audiences for decades, and his memoir makes it easy to understand why. In his trademark easygoing tone, Williams takes us on the journey from his childhood in 1930s Harlem to his international success in Hollywood. We never even realized he’d enjoyed a successful decade on Broadway before pursuing a film career—or that, in addition to acting, he’s also an admired painter. And, of course, we were excited to hear Williams describe what it was like to not only play but develop the legendary Star Wars character Lando Calrissian. (Though his stories about fans who seemed to think he was Lando were a little scary!) Williams even gives a few salacious details about his many affairs during his headier days, but he also isn’t afraid to interrogate bigger issues, like racism in Hollywood. Hearing Williams tell this tale in that familiar voice—seasoned a bit by time—makes for a truly out-of-this-world listen.
