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William December "Billy Dee" Williams, Jr. (born April 6, 1937) is an American actor, artist, singer, and writer. He is most known for playing Lando Calrissian in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Williams was born in New York City, New York, the son of Loretta Anne, a West Indian-born elevator operator from Montserrat, and William December Williams, Sr., an African-American caretaker from Texas. He has a twin sister, Loretta, and grew up in Harlem, where he was raised by his maternal grandmother while his parents worked at several jobs. Williams... MORE

William December "Billy Dee" Williams, Jr. (born April 6, 1937) is an American actor, artist, singer, and writer. He is most known for playing Lando Calrissian in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Williams was born in New York City, New York, the son of Loretta Anne, a West Indian-born elevator operator from Montserrat, and William December Williams, Sr., an African-American caretaker from Texas. He has a twin sister, Loretta, and grew up in Harlem, where he was raised by his maternal grandmother while his parents worked at several jobs. Williams graduated from Manhattan's School of Performing Arts, where he was a classmate of Diahann Carroll, who coincidentally played the wife of his character Brady Lloyd on the 1980s prime-time soap Dynasty. He first appeared on Broadway in 1945 in The Firebrand of Florence. He returned to Broadway as an adult in 1960 in the play version of The Cool Word. He appeared in A Taste of Honey in 1961. A 1976 Broadway production, I Have a Dream, was directed by Robert Greenwald and starred Williams as Martin Luther King, Jr. His most recent Broadway appearance was in August Wilson's Fences, as a replacement for James LESS