BILLY DEE WILLIAMS

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

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

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.

I am an artist no matter what I do. I live for creativity. I think everyone should. It is the antithesis of being destructive.

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.

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

I think I've been very fortunate, considering the obstacles that I had to deal with, you know, just being - by virtue of being a brown, lovely, brown-skinned man. But on the other hand, I've been able to make a good living, and I've been able to take care of my family, which is most important to me.

I don't know. You know, when I'm not acting, I'm not an actor. I'm just a person. That's how I go through life. I'd rather not - you know, like a lot of actors, you know, they spend their whole 24 hours a day being an actor.

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.

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.

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.

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

Power is a very peculiar thing. It's like the ego. The ego's only there to keep you above water. Once we realize something good about ourselves, we have a tendency to abuse the gift.

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.

I think of film when I paint. Even the luminosity that I always keep working for is really about film. But my idea is not to paint paintings that will decorate somebody's house.

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

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

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.'

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.

If anything, I've seen myself as the full spectrum of colors, and to be faced with not being able to do something just because I'm of a particular race has been something that I've always found very difficult - even today.

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

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.

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

I want people to see my heart, what I feel - not as one of America's best black actors but as one of the best actors.

I did something that no brown-skinned man in the movie industry ever did. I made a brown-skinned man look very romantic - a matinee idol. If you think about it, what I introduced is historical because it had never happened before, and it hasn't happened since - not on that level.