Robin Williams

This article is about the American actor and comedian. For other uses, see Robin Williams (disambiguation).

Robin Williams
Williams at the Happy Feet Two premiere, 2011
Born	Robin McLaurin Williams (1951-07-21)July 21, 1951 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died	August 11, 2014(2014-08-11) (aged 63) Paradise Cay, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Asphyxia (suicide by hanging)
Alma mater	Juilliard School
Occupation(s)	Actor, stand-up comedian, film producer, screenwriter
Years active	1972–2014
Spouses	Valerie Velardi (1978–1988) Marsha Garces (1989–2008) Susan Schneider (2011–2014)
Children	Zachary Williams Zelda Williams Cody Williams
Comedy career
Medium	Stage, film, television
Genres	Character comedy, improvisational comedy
Website	robinwilliams.com

Robin McLaurin Williams (July 21, 1951 – August 11, 2014) was an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork & Mindy (1978–82), Williams went on to establish a successful career in both stand-up comedy and feature film acting. His film career included such acclaimed films as Popeye (1980), The World According to Garp (1982), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Dead Poets Society (1989), Awakenings (1990), The Fisher King (1991), and Good Will Hunting (1997), as well as financial successes such as Hook (1991), Aladdin (1992), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Jumanji (1995), The Birdcage (1996), Night at the Museum (2006), and Happy Feet (2006). He also appeared in the video "Don't Worry, Be Happy" by Bobby McFerrin.

Williams was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor three times, and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Good Will Hunting. He also received two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and five Grammy Awards.

Williams suffered from depression throughout his life, and also struggled with drug and alcohol addiction. On August 11, 2014, he was found dead after committing suicide by hanging himself at his home in Paradise Cay, near Tiburon, California.

Early life and education

Robin McLaurin Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois, on July 21, 1951. His mother, Laurie McLaurin (c. 1923 – September 4, 2001), was a former model from Jackson, Mississippi, whose own great-grandfather was Mississippi senator and governor Anselm J. McLaurin. His father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams (September 10, 1906 – October 18, 1987), was a senior executive at Ford Motor Company in charge of the Midwest region. Williams had English, Welsh, Irish, Scottish, German, and French ancestry. He was raised in the Episcopal Church (while his mother practiced Christian Science), and later authored the comedic list, "Top Ten Reasons to be an Episcopalian."

Williams attended elementary school in Lake Forest, Illinois and began middle school there. His young friends recall him as being very funny. When Williams's father was transferred to Detroit, the family moved from the Chicago area to a 40-room farm house in suburban Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he was a student at the Detroit Country Day School. He excelled in school and became president of the class. He was on the school's soccer team and wrestling team. In middle school, Williams was bullied and would seek out new routes home to avoid his tormentors. He told jokes to his mother to make her laugh and pay attention to him. Williams spent much of his time alone in the family's large home, playing with his 2,000 toy soldiers. "My only companions, my only friends as a child were my imagination," he said.

Williams's father was away much of the time and, when he was home, Williams found him "frightening". His mother worked too, leaving Williams to be attended to by the maids they employed. Williams claimed his upbringing left him with an acute fear of abandonment and a condition he described as "Love Me Syndrome."

When Williams was 16, his father took early retirement and the family moved to Woodacre, California, where he attended the public Redwood High School in nearby Larkspur. When he graduated in 1969, the senior class voted him both "Most Likely Not to Succeed" and "Funniest."

Williams studied political science at Claremont McKenna College (then called Claremont Men's College) in Claremont, California. Williams left Claremont and attained a full scholarship to the esteemed Juilliard School in New York City. In between Claremont and Juilliard, he returned to Marin County and studied theatre for three years at a community college, the College of Marin, where according to drama professor James Dunn, Williams's talent first became evident when he was cast as Fagin in Oliver!. He had two brothers: Robert Todd Williams (June 14, 1938 – August 14, 2007) and McLaurin Smith.

Williams described himself as a quiet child whose first imitation was of his grandmother to his mother. He did not overcome his shyness until he became involved with his high school drama department. In 1973, Williams was one of only 20 students accepted into the freshman class at Juilliard and one of only two students to be accepted by John Houseman into the Advanced Program at the school that year; the other was Christopher Reeve. In his dialects class, Williams had no trouble quickly mastering dialects. Williams left Juilliard in 1976.

Television career

After appearing in the cast of the short-lived The Richard Pryor Show on NBC, Williams was cast by Garry Marshall as the alien Mork in a 1978 episode of the hit TV series Happy Days after impressing the producer with his quirky sense of humor when he sat on his head when asked to take a seat for the audition. As Mork, Williams improvised much of his dialogue and physical comedy, speaking in a high, nasal voice. Mork's appearance was so popular with viewers that it led to a spin-off hit television sitcom, Mork & Mindy, which ran from 1978 to 1982; the show was written to accommodate Williams's improvisations. Although he played the same character as in his appearance in Happy Days, the show was set in the present day, in Boulder, Colorado, instead of the late 1950s in Milwaukee. Mork was an extremely popular character, featured on posters, coloring books, lunchboxes, and other merchandise. Mork & Mindy was such a success in its first season that Williams appeared on the March 12, 1979, cover of Time magazine, then the leading news magazine in the U.S.

Starting in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Williams began to reach a wider audience with his stand-up comedy, including three HBO comedy specials, Off The Wall (1978), An Evening with Robin Williams (1982), and Robin Williams: Live at the Met (1986). Also in 1986, Williams co-hosted the 58th Academy Awards.

His stand-up work was a consistent thread through his career, as seen by the success of his one-man show (and subsequent DVD) Robin Williams: Live on Broadway (2002). He was voted 13th on Comedy Central's list "100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time" in 2004.

Williams and Billy Crystal appeared in an unscripted cameo at the beginning of an episode of the third season of Friends. They were in the building where the show was shooting and were asked to improvise their lines. Williams appeared on an episode of the American version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? (Season 3, Episode 9: November 16, 2000). During a game of "Scenes from a Hat", the scene "What Robin Williams is thinking right now" was drawn, and Williams stated, "I have a career. What the hell am I doing here?" On December 4, 2010, he appeared with Robert De Niro on Saturday Night Live in the sketch "What Up with That". In 2012, he guest-starred as himself in two FX series, Louie and Wilfred.

In February 2013, CBS announced it had picked up a pilot episode for a David E. Kelley comedy called The Crazy Ones starring Williams. The series was officially picked up on May 10, 2013. Williams played Simon Roberts, a father who works with his daughter (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar) in an advertising office. The series premiered on September 26, 2013, and was canceled after one season.

Film roles

Most of Williams's acting career was in film, although he gave some performances on stage as well (notably as Estragon in a production of Waiting for Godot with Steve Martin). His first film was the 1977 comedy Can I Do It 'Till I Need Glasses? His performance in Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) earned Williams an Academy Award nomination. Many of his roles have been comedies tinged with pathos.

His role as the Genie in the animated film Aladdin (1992) was instrumental in establishing the importance of star power in voice actor casting. Williams used his voice talents again in Fern Gully, as the holographic Dr. Know in the 2001 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence, in the 2005 animated film Robots, the 2006 Academy Award-winning Happy Feet, and an uncredited vocal performance in the film Everyone's Hero. He was also the voice of The Timekeeper, a former attraction at the Walt Disney World Resort about a time-traveling robot who encounters Jules Verne and brings him to the future.

Williams at the 62nd Academy Awards in 1990 with a Polish American journalist Yola Czaderska-Hayek

Williams's roles in dramatic films garnered him an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor (for his role as a psychologist in Good Will Hunting), as well as two previous Academy Award nominations (for playing an English teacher in Dead Poets Society (1989), and for playing a troubled homeless man in The Fisher King (1991)). Also in 1991, he played an adult Peter Pan in the movie Hook. Other acclaimed dramatic films include Moscow on the Hudson (1984), Awakenings (1990), and What Dreams May Come (1998). In the 2002 film Insomnia, Williams portrayed a writer/killer on the run from a sleep-deprived Los Angeles policeman (played by Al Pacino) in rural Alaska. Also in 2002, in the psychological thriller One Hour Photo, Williams played an emotionally disturbed photo development technician who becomes obsessed with a family for whom he has developed pictures for a long time.

In 2006, Williams starred in The Night Listener, a thriller about a radio show host who realizes that a child with whom he has developed a friendship may or may not exist; that year, he starred in five movies, including Man of the Year, was the Surprise Guest at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, and appeared on an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition that aired on January 30, 2006.

Williams was known for his improvisational skills and impersonations, and his performances frequently involved impromptu humor designed and delivered in rapid-fire succession while on stage. According to the Aladdin DVD commentary, most of his dialogue as the Genie was improvised.

At one point, he was in the running to play the Riddler in Batman Forever until director Tim Burton dropped the project. Earlier, Williams had been a strong contender to play the Joker in Batman. He had expressed interest in assuming the role in The Dark Knight, the sequel to 2005's Batman Begins, although the part of the Joker was played by Heath Ledger, who won, posthumously, the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

He was portrayed by Chris Diamantopoulos in the made-for-TV biographical film Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Mork & Mindy (2005), documenting the actor's arrival in Hollywood as a struggling comedian.

Stand-up career

Williams did a number of stand-up comedy shows in California beginning in the early 1970s, including the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived. A decade earlier, San Francisco was already a center for a rock music renaissance, hippies, drugs, and a sexual revolution, and Williams would be responsible for leading its "comedy renaissance," writes Nachman.

Some of his later tours, after he became a tv and film star, include An Evening With Robin Williams (1982), Robin Williams: At The Met (1986), and Robin Williams LIVE on Broadway (2002). The latter broke many long-held records for a comedy show. In some cases, tickets were sold out within thirty minutes of going on sale.

After a six-year break, in August 2008, Williams announced a new 26-city tour titled "Weapons of Self-Destruction". He said that this was his last chance to make cracks at the expense of the current Bush Administration, but by the time the show was staged, only a few minutes covered that subject. The tour started at the end of September 2009 and concluded in New York on December 3, and was the subject of an HBO special on December 8, 2009.

Williams later described the life of stand-up comedians like himself:

It's a brutal field, man. They burn out. It takes its toll. Plus, the lifestyle—partying, drinking, drugs. If you're on the road, it's even more brutal. You gotta come back down to mellow your ass out, and then performing takes you back up. They flame out because it comes and goes. Suddenly they're hot, and then somebody else is hot. Sometimes they get very bitter. Sometimes they just give up. Sometimes they have a revival thing and they come back again. Sometimes they snap. The pressure kicks in. You become obsessed and then you lose that focus that you need.

Theatre career

Williams appeared opposite Steve Martin at Lincoln Center in an Off-Broadway production of Waiting for Godot in 1988. He made his Broadway acting debut in Rajiv Joseph's Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, which opened at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on March 31, 2011. He headlined his own one-man show, Robin Williams: Live on Broadway, that played at The Broadway Theatre in July 2002.

Personal life

Marriages and children

Williams's residence in Sea Cliff, San Francisco

On June 4, 1978, Robin Williams married his first wife, Valerie Velardi. They met in 1976 when he worked as a bartender at a tavern in San Francisco. Their son Zachary Pym "Zak" Williams was born on April 11, 1983. During Williams's first marriage, he was involved in an extramarital relationship with Michelle Tish Carter, a cocktail waitress whom he met in 1984. She sued him in 1986, claiming that he did not tell her he was infected with the herpes simplex virus before he embarked on a sexual relationship with her in the mid-1980s, during which, she said, he transmitted the virus to her. The case was settled out of court. Williams and Velardi divorced in 1988.

On April 30, 1989, he married Marsha Garces, a Filipino American and Zachary's nanny, who was several months pregnant with his child. They had two children, Zelda Rae Williams (born July 31, 1989) and Cody Alan Williams (born November 25, 1991). In March 2008, Garces filed for divorce from Williams, citing irreconcilable differences.

Williams married his third wife, graphic designer Susan Schneider, on October 23, 2011, in St. Helena, California. Their residence was Williams's house in Sea Cliff, a neighborhood in San Francisco, California.

Of what gives him a sense of wonder, Williams stated, "My children give me a great sense of wonder. Just to see them develop into these extraordinary human beings."

Family and friends

While studying at Juilliard, Williams befriended Christopher Reeve. They had several classes together in which they were the only students, and they remained good friends for the rest of Reeve's life. Williams visited Reeve after the horse-riding accident that rendered him a quadriplegic, and cheered him up by pretending to be an eccentric Russian doctor (similar to his role in Nine Months). Williams claimed that he was there to perform a colonoscopy. Reeve stated that he laughed for the first time since the accident and knew that life was going to be okay.

Williams aboard the USS Enterprise in 2003

On August 14, 2007, Williams's elder brother, Robert Todd Williams, died of complications from heart surgery performed a month earlier.

Other interests

Williams was a passionate supporter of his hometown's professional sports teams, the San Francisco 49ers and the San Francisco Giants.

He was a member of the Episcopal Church. He described his denomination in a comedy routine as "Catholic Lite—same rituals, half the guilt."

Williams speaking at the 2008 BBC World Debate

Williams was an avid enthusiast of video games and named two of his children after game characters. He named his daughter after Princess Zelda from The Legend of Zelda action-adventure game series. They both have been featured in an ad for the Nintendo 3DS remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. His son may have been named after Cody from the beat 'em up game Final Fight. He also enjoyed pen-and-paper role-playing games and online video games, playing Warcraft III, Day of Defeat, Half-Life, and the first-person shooter Battlefield 2 which he played as a sniper. He was also previously a fan of the Wizardry series of role-playing video games.

On January 6, 2006, Williams performed live at the Consumer Electronics Show during Google's keynote. In the 2006 E3, on the invitation of Will Wright, he demonstrated the creature editor of Spore while simultaneously commenting on the creature's look: "This will actually make a platypus look good." He also complimented the game's versatility, comparing it to Populous and Black & White. Later that year, he was one of several celebrities to participate in the Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day.

Williams's favorite book was the Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov, the actor expressed enthusiasm at the idea of playing the character Hari Seldon in an adaptation. His favorite book growing up as a child was The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, which he later shared with his children, "I would read the whole C.S. Lewis series out loud to my kids. I was once reading to Zelda, and she said 'Don't do any voices. Just read it as yourself.' So I did, I just read it straight, and she said 'That's better.'"

A fan of professional road cycling, Williams was a regular on the US Postal and Discovery Channel Pro Cycling team bus and hotels during the years Lance Armstrong dominated the Tour de France. He owned over 50 bicycles.

Williams enjoyed rugby union and was a fan of a former All Black, Jonah Lomu.

Williams enjoyed listening to jazz, "specifically Keith Jarrett piano solos". He also listened to Tom Waits, Radiohead, and Prince.

Williams was a supporter of eco-friendly vehicles. He drove a Toyota Prius and was on the waiting list for an Aptera 2 Series electric vehicle before the company folded in December 2011.

In 2010, Williams announced that he would love to play the Riddler in the next installment to the Batman films by director Christopher Nolan, though Nolan has stated that the Riddler would not be featured in the film.

On Israel's 60th Independence Day in 2008, Williams appeared in Times Square along with a number of other celebrities to wish Israel a "happy birthday". He had described himself as an "honorary Jew".

Charity work

Williams performing at Camp Victory for the USO on December 13, 2010

Williams and his second wife, Marsha, founded the Windfall Foundation, a philanthropic organization to raise money for many charities. Williams devoted much of his energy to charity work, including the Comic Relief fundraising efforts (the program was hosted by himself, Billy Crystal, and Whoopi Goldberg). In December 1999, he sang in French on the BBC-inspired music video of international celebrities doing a cover of The Rolling Stones' "It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It)" for the charity Children's Promise.

In response to the 2010 Canterbury earthquake, Williams donated all proceeds of his "Weapons of Self Destruction" Christchurch performance to helping rebuild the New Zealand city. Half the proceeds were donated to the Red Cross and half to the mayoral building fund. Williams performed with the USO for U.S. troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Williams also supported St. Jude Children's Research Hospital for several years.

Addiction and health problems

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Williams had an addiction to cocaine. Williams was a close friend of and frequent partier alongside John Belushi. He said the death of his friend and the birth of his son Zak prompted him to quit drugs and alcohol: "Was it a wake-up call? Oh yeah, on a huge level. The grand jury helped too."

Williams started drinking alcohol again in 2003, while working in a small town in Alaska. On August 9, 2006, he checked himself in to a substance-abuse rehabilitation center in Newberg, Oregon. He later said that he was an alcoholic. His publicist delivered the announcement:

After 20 years of sobriety, Robin Williams found himself drinking again and has decided to take proactive measures to deal with this for his own well-being and the well-being of his family.

While acknowledging his failure to maintain sobriety, Williams would never return to use of cocaine, declaring in a 2010 interview:

"No. Cocaine – paranoid and impotent, what fun. There was no bit of me thinking, ooh, let's go back to that. Useless conversations until midnight, waking up at dawn feeling like a vampire on a day pass. No."

Williams was hospitalized in March 2009 due to heart problems. He postponed his one-man tour in order to undergo surgery to replace his aortic valve. The surgery was successfully completed on March 13, 2009, at the Cleveland Clinic.

Illness and death

In mid-2014, Williams had admitted himself into the Hazelden Foundation Addiction Treatment Center in Lindstrom, Minnesota, for continued sobriety treatment related to his alcoholism. According to his publicist, Williams suffered from depression.

At around 11:45 a.m. (PDT) on August 11, 2014, Williams was discovered by his personal assistant at his home in Paradise Cay, an unincorporated enclave of the town of Tiburon, California. About ten minutes later, county emergency 911 dispatchers received a telephone call reporting Williams was unresponsive and not breathing. The Marin County Sheriff's Office and firefighters from two local fire protection districts immediately responded to the scene, and Williams was pronounced dead shortly after they arrived, at 12:02 p.m. (PDT). To prevent unauthorized photos from being taken or disclosed (since Marin County has no county morgue), Williams's body was brought to the Napa County morgue for autopsy by Marin County's chief forensic pathologist, Dr. Joseph Cohen.

At a press conference on August 12, 2014, the Coroner Division of the Marin County Sheriff's Office disclosed that Williams had apparently hanged himself with a belt, and that the cause of death based on preliminary autopsy results was "asphyxia due to hanging." Results from toxicology tests are expected in two to six weeks.

Filmography

Main article: Robin Williams filmography

Bibliography

• Jay David (1999). The Life and Humor of Robin Williams: A Biography. New York: Quill. ISBN 978-0-688-15245-1.
• Andy Dougan (1999). Robin Williams: A Biography. Thunder's Mouth Press. ISBN 978-1-56025-213-9.
• Stephen J. Spignesi (1997). The Robin Williams Scrapbook. Secaucus, NJ: Carol Pub. ISBN 978-0-8065-1891-6.

Further reading

• "Special Edition: The Death of Robin Williams". Nightline. ABC News. August 11, 2014.
• "The Life and Death of Robin Williams". 2020. ABC News. August 12, 2014.
• Weisman, Aly (August 13, 2014). "Robin Williams set up a 3-part trust fund for his kids amid money troubles before death". Business Insider.

External links

• Official website
• Robin Williams at the Internet Broadway Database
• Robin Williams at IMDb
• Robin Williams at the TCM Movie Database