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Even as a youngster growing up on 110th Street in New York's Harlem, Williams was the darling of the culture-craving women of the family. His grandmother entertained him by reciting Longfellow. His twin sister, Loretta, an aspiring ballerina, pirouetted through the apartment. Their mother had studied to become an opera singer, instead operated an elevator to work for her children's education. Young Billy earned extra money by drawing his own comic books and selling them to school chums for a nickel. At 19, he hoped to become a fashion illustrator. But a chance meeting with a CBS casting director led to bit parts on various shows, and at age 23 he achieved success in the hit play A Taste of Honey. But his career unexpectedly stalled during the racially turbulent 1960s. "I was too black for white producers and too light-skinned for blacks." Williams even tried using a sun lamp to make his black more beautiful, but only succeeded in burning his face.
Nowadays Billy Dee is firmly tied with a Gordyan knot—a guaranteed annual income of $200,000 whether he works or not, plus percentages of his films. A loner who lives quietly in a modest three-bedroom house in Laurel Canyon with his Japanese-American wife Teruko and three children, Williams spends free time meditating, sketching, writing poetry and working out daily in a gym. His life-style more closely resembles that of such famed loners as Robert Redford and Paul Newman than that of Billy Dee's gregarious idol Clark Gable. "I am still searching," says Williams seriously. "I think I have been chosen to be recognized in a certain kind of way. Producers are beginning to see me in situations other than black. I am part of an innovative force."