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Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Billy Dee Williams Quotes

I tend to approach characters not based on ethnicity but on some unique individual qualities, and I’ve set my whole life that way. I don’t want any sort of limitations imposed on my work. If you truly want to be a creative person, you can’t limit yourself.

– Billy Dee Williams

I don’t want to sound too carried away, but from what I’ve seen, ‘Bingo Long’ is going to be a big one. A classic.

– Billy Dee Williams

Originally I planned on starting a teapot collection. I really like them.

– Billy Dee Williams

It’s in our nature. We need to explore and find out what’s going on outside of who we are.

– Billy Dee Williams

Failure’s not a bad thing. It builds character. It makes you stronger.

– Billy Dee Williams

I love the Mexican muralists – like Rivera, Orozco – and the music of Walter Benton. They gave you a sense that reality was much more than life.

– Billy Dee Williams

I don’t know why everybody thinks I’m smooth. I think I’m just a pretty silly person, really.

– Billy Dee Williams

You are always going to have people criticizing, in one way or another, for their own personal reason.

– Billy Dee Williams

My mother’s side of the family, they’re from Montserrat in the Leeward Islands.

– Billy Dee Williams

There’s always been a lot of misunderstanding about Lando’s character. I used to pick up my daughter from elementary school and get into arguments with little children who would accuse me of betraying Han Solo.

– Billy Dee Williams

Oh, I paint all the time.

– Billy Dee Williams

The world moves fast, but change isn’t always a good thing when you got it right the first time around.

– Billy Dee Williams

Jazz is very much a part of my life. I work with the Thelonious Monk Institute and do the artwork for their program every year.

– Billy Dee Williams

I loved Marlon Brando: my favorite actor.

– Billy Dee Williams

For myself, if I’m trying to obtain a certain longevity in my career, to establish myself as a certain kind of star, I don’t want that black exploitation image.

– Billy Dee Williams

I was in the National Academy of Fine Arts and Design, on a scholarship. I was – still am – an artist. They were looking for an actor for ‘Take a Giant Step,’ and a producer liked my look and asked if I could act. I said, ‘Yep!’ Then I got into acting more or less just to make money for paints and canvases.

– Billy Dee Williams

Acting, I started when I was six and a half years-old, on Broadway with Kurt Weill.

– Billy Dee Williams

No matter where I go, in this country or outside of this country, there are young people, and I’m always surprised that young people know about me and Colt 45.

– Billy Dee Williams

It was a time after ‘Lady Sings the Blues’ and ‘Mahogany’ and all those romantic movies: I became this romantic figure on the street in a very special way.

– Billy Dee Williams

I’m always looking for good things to do.

– Billy Dee Williams

I think a lot of black filmmakers have done very well.

– Billy Dee Williams

Sometimes a true original doesn’t need to change a thing.

– Billy Dee Williams

Right before ‘Brian’s Song’ there was a period when I was very despondent, broke, depressed; my first marriage was on the rocks. The role of Gale Sayers had been cast with Lou Gossett, and then he hurt himself playing basketball. I was called in to read for the role. I was their last choice, and I knew it.

– Billy Dee Williams

I don’t want to find myself ever locked into what people think I should think or do. In my art, and acting, I have a universal vision of things, an international vision. Bigger and broader and beyond. ‘Bigger than life’ is always on my mind.

– Billy Dee Williams

I tell my son Corey that the greatest teacher is the teacher who says, ‘Don’t follow me; follow yourself. Because within you there is that kingdom, that life, that force.’

– Billy Dee Williams

As for Colt 45, I am very proud of my endorsement of the product, and it still ‘Works every time.’

– Billy Dee Williams