| His name, Mykelti, means "spirit" or "silent friend" in the Blackfoot language of his grandfather's ancestors, and Williamson got his big break as Bubba, the equally slow-witted friend to "Forrest Gump" (1994) who can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about shrimp. He had been a working actor for 15 years before his breakthrough, usually in supporting roles and often billed as 'Mykel T Williamson', a reworking of his name chosen so people would pronounce it properly. Ironically, when he changed it back, people remembered it for the first time.
Williamson's first professional job in show business was at age 13, dancing as a member of The Lockers troupe on "Soul Train" (along with Fred Berry, later a star of "What's Happening"). Williamson scored a rare feat when he was cast in an episode of "Starsky & Hutch" after his very first professional acting audition. He subsequently spent the 1980s bouncing from one short-lived series to another, from PBS' "Righteous Apples", to NBC's "Bay City Blues", to CBS' "Cover-Up", to NBC's "The Bronx Zoo", before hooking on as a recurring character on NBC's "Midnight Caller", and as the station manager "replacement" for Gary Sandy in the syndicated revival of "WKRP in Cincinnati" (1991-1993). Soon after the demise of the sitcom, he was cast as the kindly social worker in "Free Willy" (1993). For "Forrest Gump", Williamson stuffed his lower lip to make it appear thicker and to make his speech slower. His death scene amidst the war zone of Vietnam brought tears to the audience and sent Williamson's stock rising in Hollywood. Yet, except for a small, almost cameo, as Winston, the handsome American in Paris for whom Alfre Woodard pines in "How to Make an American Quilt" and the sequel "Free Willy 2" (both 1995), Williamson found that despite an initial flurry of interest he was not being cast because too many powers-that-be in Hollywood thought he really had a drooping and decidedly unattractive lower lip. The lull was snapped away by Al Pacino who, impressed with Williamson's performance as Bubba, insisted he be cast in "Heat" (1995). It didn't hurt that Michael Mann, who directed "Heat," had also cast Williamson in a key role in the pilot of "Miami Vice" in 1984. Subsequently, he played a drunken boyfriend from hell in "Waiting to Exhale" (1995), a crook involved in a kidnapping in "Truth or Consequences, NM" (1997) and a diabetic prisoner on board "Con Air" (also 1997).
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