Short answers, pulled from the story.
Harrison Ford portrays Han Solo in five films: Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Return of the Jedi (1983), The Force Awakens (2015), and The Rise of Skywalker (2019). Alden Ehrenreich plays a younger version of the character in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018).
In the earliest version of the screenplay, Han Solo was an alien of the Ureallian race with green skin, enormous gills, and no nose who was also a member of the Jedi Bendu order. Lucas made him human in a later draft to better develop his relationships with the other characters.
Director J.J. Abrams decided Solo's death at the hands of his son Kylo Ren would move the story forward in a meaningful way and give Kylo Ren the weight needed to develop into a worthy successor to Darth Vader. An early draft of the screenplay had Solo survive the film.
Ford was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Solo in the original Star Wars and won the award for his performance in The Force Awakens.
A recruiting officer gave Han the surname Solo because he had no family. Before that, he was an orphan living on the planet Corellia as part of the White Worms criminal gang.
Joseph Campbell described Solo as a man who "thinks he's an egoist; but he really isn't," and called him "a very practical guy" who was "a compassionate human being at the same time and didn't know it." Campbell believed the adventure evoked qualities in Solo that he hadn't known he possessed.