What Have We Here
Portraits of a Life
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WHAT HAVE WE HERE? follows Billy Dee Williams from his childhood growing up in Harlem to his days on Broadway and in Hollywood before landing the role in George Lucas' space opera that would win him everlasting fame.
Over a 60-year career spanning Broadway, music, movies, and television, Billy's tales and travels include Lawrence Olivier, Marlon Brando, James Baldwin, Henry Fonda, Duke Ellington, Berry Gordy, Diana Ross, Richard Pryor, Sylvester Stallone, Diahann Carroll, and a world of less famous but no less colourful characters.
And that's just his life on this planet. As hundreds of millions of Star Wars fans worldwide know, Williams is and always will be Lando Calrissian, the double-dealing, outlandishly handsome rogue from George Lucas' classic Star Wars adventures The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi, a role he reprised in 2019's Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Eighty-six-year-old Star Wars actor Williams provides a candid look back at his life and career in this genial debut memoir. Williams grew up in New York City in the 1940s and landed his first role, at seven years old, via his mother, who worked as a secretary for a Broadway producer. Bigger stage roles soon followed, and he eventually succeeded James Earl Jones as the lead in the original Broadway production of August Wilson's Fences in 1988. Williams's breakout film role was opposite Diana Ross in 1972's Lady Sings the Blues, in which his charm and good looks led the press to dub him "the Black Clark Gable." Following that success, he turned down several roles in Blacksploitation films, fearing they'd "put in a box," and his career stalled until George Lucas's desire to racially diversify the Star Wars series led to Williams being cast as Lando Calrissian in 1980's The Empire Strikes Back. Williams ruminates on his professional triumphs, disappointments (including being passed over for the role of Harvey Dent in Tim Burton's Batman), and friendships (he counted Laurence Olivier and James Baldwin among his peers), as well as his three failed marriages and his love of painting. Even as he catalogs losses and missteps, Williams writes with the panache and suavity that characterize his screen presence. The result is a heartfelt Hollywood self-portrait.
