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Robin Williams
Robin McLaurin Williams was an American actor and comedian. Born in Chicago, Williams began performing stand-up comedy in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the mid-1970s,
and is credited with leading San Francisco's comedy renaissance. After rising to fame playing the alien Mork in the sitcom Mork & Mindy, Williams established a career in both stand-up comedy and feature film acting.
He was known for his improvisation skills. After his first starring film role in Popeye, Williams starred in numerous films that achieved critical and financial success, including Good Morning, Vietnam,
Dead Poets Society, Aladdin, The Birdcage, and Good Will Hunting. He also starred in widely acclaimed films such as The World According to Garp, Moscow on the Hudson, Awakenings, The Fisher King,
What Dreams May Come, One Hour Photo, and World's Greatest Dad, as well as box office hits such as Hook, Mrs. Doubtfire, Jumanji and Night at the Museum. Williams was nominated four times for the Academy Awards,
winning once as Best Supporting Actor for his performance as psychologist Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting. He also received two Primetime Emmy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards,
and four Grammy Awards. On August 11, 2014, Williams committed suicide in his Paradise Cay, California home at the age of 63. His wife attributed his suicide to Williams' struggle with Lewy body disease.
Early life
Robin McLaurin Williams was born at St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, on July 21, 1951. His father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams, was a senior executive in Ford Motor Company's Lincoln-Mercury Division. His mother,
Laurie McLaurin, was a former model from Jackson, Mississippi; her great-grandfather was Mississippi senator and governor Anselm J. McLaurin. Williams had two elder half-brothers paternal half-brother Robert
and maternal half-brother McLaurin. He had English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, German, and French ancestry. While his mother was a practitioner of Christian Science,
Williams was raised in the Episcopal Church his father belonged to. Williams wrote a list: "Top Ten Reasons to Be an Episcopalian". During a television interview on Inside the Actors Studio in 2001,
Williams credited his mother as an important early influence on his humor, and he tried to make her laugh to gain attention. Williams attended public elementary school in Lake Forest at Gorton Elementary School
and middle school at Deer Path Junior High School. He described himself as a quiet child who did not overcome his shyness until he became involved with his high school drama department.
His friends recall him as very funny. In late 1963, when Williams was 12, his father was transferred to Detroit. The family lived in a 40-room farmhouse on 20 acres in suburban Bloomfield Hills, Michigan,
where he was a student at the private Detroit Country Day School. He excelled in school, where he was on the school's soccer team and wrestling team, and was elected class president. As both his parents worked,
Williams was attended to by the family's maid, who was his main companion. When Williams was 16, his father took early retirement and the family moved to Marin County, Tiburon, California. Following their move,
Williams attended Redwood High School in nearby Larkspur. At the time of his graduation in 1969, he was voted "Most Likely Not to Succeed" and "Funniest" by his classmates.
College and Juilliard School
After high school graduation, Williams enrolled at Claremont Men's College in Claremont, California, to study political science; he dropped out to pursue acting.
Williams studied theatre for three years at the College of Marin, a community college in Kentfield, California. According to College of Marin's drama professor James Dunn,
Williams' talent became evident when he was cast in the musical Oliver! as Fagin. Williams often improvised during his time in the drama program, leaving cast members in hysterics.
Dunn called his wife after one late rehearsal to tell her that Williams "was going to be something special". In 1973, Williams attained a full scholarship to the Juilliard School in New York City.
He was one of 20 students accepted into the freshman class and one of two accepted by John Houseman into the Advanced Program at the school that year; the other was Christopher Reeve. William Hurt
and Mandy Patinkin were also classmates. According to biographer Jean Dorsinville, Franklyn Seales and Williams were roommates at Juilliard.
Reeve remembered his first impression of Williams when they were new students at Juilliard: Williams and Reeve had a class in dialects taught by Edith Skinner, who Reeve said was one of the world's leading voice
and speech teachers. According to Reeve, Skinner was bewildered by Williams, who could instantly perform in many accents, including Scottish, Irish, English, Russian, and Italian.
Their primary acting teacher was Michael Kahn, who was "equally baffled by this human dynamo". Williams already had a reputation for being funny, but Kahn criticized his antics as simple stand-up comedy.
In a later production, Williams silenced his critics with his convincing role of an old man in The Night of the Iguana, by Tennessee Williams. "He simply was the old man," wrote Reeve. "I was astonished by his work
and very grateful that fate had thrown us together." Williams and Reeve remained close friends until Reeve's death in 2004. Reeve had struggled for years with being quadriplegic after a horse-riding accident.
Williams' son Zak remembered their friendship as having been like "brothers from another mother." Williams paid many of Reeve's medical bills and gave financial support to his family. During the summers of 1974, 1975
and 1976, Williams worked as a busser at The Trident in Sausalito, California. He left Juilliard during his junior year in 1976 at the suggestion of Houseman, who said there was nothing more Juilliard could teach him.
Gerald Freedman, another of Williams' teachers at Juilliard, said that Williams was a "genius" and that the school's conservative and classical style of training did not suit him; no one was surprised that he left.
Stand-up comedy
 [^]  After his family moved to Marin County, Williams began performing stand-up comedy in the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid-1970s. He gave his first performance at the Holy City Zoo, a comedy club in San Francisco,
where he worked his way up from tending bar. In the 1960s, San Francisco was a center for a rock music renaissance, hippies, drugs, and a sexual revolution, and in the 1970s, Williams helped lead its "comedy renaissance",
writes critic Gerald Nachman. Williams says he found out about "drugs and happiness" during that period, adding that he saw "the best brains of my time turned to mud". Williams moved to Los Angeles
and continued performing stand-up at clubs including the Comedy Club. There, in 1977, he was seen by TV producer George Schlatter, who asked him to appear on a revival of his Laugh-In show. The show aired in late 1977
and was Williams' debut TV appearance. That year, Williams also performed a show at the LA Improv for Home Box Office. While the Laugh-In revival failed, it led Williams into a television career;
he continued performing stand-up at comedy clubs such as the Roxy to help keep his improvisational skills sharp.
Televised live performances
Williams won a Grammy Award for the recording of his 1979 live show at the Copacabana in New York, "Reality.What a Concept". Some of his later tours, after he became a TV and film star,
include An Evening With Robin Williams, Robin Williams: At The Met and Robin Williams: Live on Broadway. The latter broke many long-held records for a comedy show. In some cases, tickets sold out within thirty minutes.
In 1986, Williams released A Night at the Met. After a six-year break, in August 2008, Williams announced a new 26-city tour, "Weapons of Self-Destruction".
He said that this was his last chance to make jokes at the expense of the 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.
Hardships in performing stand-up
Williams said that partly due to the stress of performing stand-up, he started using drugs and alcohol early in his career. He further said that he never drank nor took drugs while on stage,
but occasionally performed when hung over from the previous day. During the period he was using cocaine, he said that it made him paranoid when performing on stage.
Williams once described the life of stand-up comedians: Some, such as the critic Vincent Canby,
were concerned that his monologues were so intense that it seemed as though at any minute his "creative process could reverse into a complete meltdown." His biographer Emily Herbert described his "intense,
utterly manic style of stand-up [which sometimes] defies analysis. [going] beyond energetic, beyond frenetic. [and sometimes] dangerous. because of what it said about the creator's own mental state."
Williams felt secure he would not run out of ideas, as the constant change in world events would keep him supplied.
He also explained that he often used free association of ideas while improvising in order to keep the audience interested. The competitive atmosphere caused problems; for example,
some comedians accused him of copying their jokes, which Williams strongly denied. Whoopi Goldberg defended him, explaining that it is difficult for comedians not to reuse another comedian's material,
and that it is done "all the time". He later avoided going to performances of other comedians to deter similar accusations. During a Playboy interview in 1992,
Williams was asked whether he ever feared losing his balance between his work and his life. He replied, "There's that fear—if I felt like I was becoming not just dull, but a rock, that I still couldn't speak, fire off
or talk about things, if I'd start to worry or got too afraid to say something. If I stop trying, I get afraid." While he attributed the recent suicide of novelist Jerzy Kosiński to his fear of losing his creativity
and sharpness, Williams felt he could overcome those risks. For that, he credited his father for strengthening his self-confidence, telling him to never be afraid of talking about subjects which were important to him.
Rumors have circulated accusing Williams of stealing material from other comics, especially in the 1970s. David Brenner claims that he confronted Williams personally
and threatened him with bodily harm if he heard Williams utter another one of his jokes.
Mork & Mindy
 [^]  After the Laugh-In revival and appearing in the cast of The Richard Pryor Show on NBC, Williams was cast by Garry Marshall as the alien Mork in a 1978 episode of the TV series Happy Days, "My Favorite Orkan".
Sought after as a last minute cast replacement for a departing actor, Williams impressed 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. The cast and crew, as well as TV network executives were deeply impressed at Williams' performance.
Mork's appearance proved so popular with viewers that it led to the spin-off television sitcom Mork & Mindy, which co-starred Pam Dawber, and ran from 1978 to 1982;
the show was written to accommodate his extreme improvisations in dialog and behavior. Although he portrayed the same character as in Happy Days, the series was set in the present in Boulder, Colorado,
instead of the late 1950s in Milwaukee. Mork & Mindy at its peak had a weekly audience of 60 million and was credited with turning Williams into a "superstar." According to critic James Poniewozik,
the series was especially popular among young people as Williams became a "man and a child, buoyant, rubber-faced, an endless gusher of invention." Mork became popular, featured on posters, coloring books, lunch-boxes,
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. The cover photo, taken by Michael Dressler in 1979,
is said to have "[captured] his different sides: the funnyman mugging for the camera, and a sweet, more thoughtful pose that appears on a small TV he holds in his hands"
according to Mary Forgione of the Los Angeles Times. This photo was installed in the National Portrait Gallery in the Smithsonian Institution shortly after Williams' death to allow visitors to pay their respects.
Williams also appeared on the cover of the August 23, 1979, issue of Rolling Stone, photographed by Richard Avedon. 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, An Evening with Robin Williams and Robin Williams: Live at the Met. Also in 1986,
Williams co-hosted the 58th Academy Awards. Williams was also a regular guest on various talk shows, including The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Late Night with David Letterman, on which he appeared 50 times.
Letterman, who knew Williams for nearly 40 years, recalls seeing him first perform as a new comedian at The Comedy Store in Hollywood, where Letterman and other comedians had already been doing stand-up.
"He came in like a hurricane," said Letterman, who said he then thought to himself, "Holy crap, there goes my chance in show business." His stand-up work was a consistent thread through his career,
as seen by the success of his one-man show Robin Williams: Live on Broadway. He was voted 13th on Comedy Central's list "100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time" in 2004. Williams
and Billy Crystal were in an unscripted cameo at the beginning of an episode of the third season of Friends. His many TV appearances included an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and he starred in an episode of Law
and Order: SVU. In 2010, he appeared in a sketch with Robert De Niro on Saturday Night Live, and in 2012, guest-starred as himself in two FX series, Louie and Wilfred. In May 2013, CBS started a new series, The Crazy Ones,
starring Williams, but the show was canceled after one season.
Film
The first film role credited to Robin Williams is a small part in the 1977 low-budget comedy Can I Do It. 'Til I Need Glasses?. His first major performance is as the title character in Popeye. There,
Williams showcased the acting skills previously demonstrated in his television work; and the film's commercial disappointment was not blamed upon his role. He stars as the leading character in The World According to Garp,
which Williams considered "may have lacked a certain madness onscreen, but it had a great core". He continued with other smaller roles in less successful films, such as The Survivors and Club Paradise,
though he said these roles did not help advance his film career. His first major break came from his starring role in director Barry Levinson's Good Morning, Vietnam,
which earned Williams a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. The film is set in 1965 during the Vietnam War, with Williams playing the role of Adrian Cronauer,
a radio shock jock who keeps the troops entertained with comedy and sarcasm. Williams was allowed to play the role without a script, improvising most of his lines. Over the microphone,
he created voice impressions of people, including Walter Cronkite, Gomer Pyle, Elvis Presley, Mr. Ed, and Richard Nixon. "We just let the cameras roll," said producer Mark Johnson,
and Williams "managed to create something new for every single take."  [^]  Many of his later roles were in comedies tinged with pathos. His roles in comedy
and dramatic films garnered Williams an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, as well as two previous Academy Award nominations, and for playing a troubled homeless man in The Fisher King. In 1991,
he played an adult Peter Pan in the film Hook, although he had said that he would have to lose twenty-five pounds. Other roles Williams had in acclaimed dramatic films include Moscow on the Hudson, Awakenings,
What Dreams May Come, and Bicentennial Man. In Insomnia, Williams portrayed a writer / killer on the run from a sleep-deprived Los Angeles policeman 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.
The last Williams movie released during his lifetime was The Angriest Man in Brooklyn, a film addressing the value of life. In it, Williams played Henry Altmann, a terminally ill man who reassesses his life
and works to redeem himself. Among the actors who helped him during his acting career, he credited Robert De Niro, from whom he learned the power of silence and economy of dialog when acting,
to portray the deep-driven man. From Dustin Hoffman, with whom he co-starred in Hook, he learned to take on totally different character types, and to transform his characters by extreme preparation. Mike Medavoy,
producer of Hook, told its director, Steven Spielberg, that he intentionally teamed up Hoffman and Williams for the film, because he knew they wanted to work together,
and that Williams welcomed the opportunity of working with Spielberg. Williams benefited from working with Woody Allen, who directed him and Billy Crystal in Deconstructing Harry,
as Allen had knowledge of the fact that Crystal and Williams had often performed together on stage. His performance in the role of a therapist in Good Will Hunting influenced some real therapists
and won Williams an Academy Award. In Awakenings, Williams played a doctor modeled on Oliver Sacks, who wrote the book on which the film was based. Sacks later said the way Williams' mind worked was a "form of genius."
In 1989 Williams played a private school teacher in Dead Poets Society, which included a final, emotional scene which some critics said "inspired a generation" and became a part of pop culture.
Looking over most of his filmography, one writer was "struck by the breadth" and radical diversity of most roles Williams portrayed. Terry Gilliam, who co-founded Monty Python and directed Williams in two of his films,
The Fisher King and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, said in 1992 that Williams had the ability to "go from manic to mad to tender and vulnerable. [Williams had] the most unique mind on the planet.
There's nobody like him out there."  [^]  Williams voiced characters in several animated films. His voice role as the Genie in the animated musical Aladdin was written for him.
The film's directors stated that they took a risk by writing the role. At first, Williams refused the role since it was a Disney movie, and he did not want the studio profiting by selling merchandise based on the movie.
He accepted the role with certain conditions: "I'm doing it basically, because I want to be part of this animation tradition. I want something for my children. One deal is,
I just don't want to sell anything—as in Burger King, as in toys, as in stuff." Williams improvised much of his dialogue, recording approximately 30 hours of tape, and impersonated dozens of celebrities,
including Ed Sullivan, Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Groucho Marx, Rodney Dangerfield, William F. Buckley, Peter Lorre, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Arsenio Hall. His role in Aladdin became one of his most recognized
and best-loved, and the film was the highest-grossing of 1992; it won numerous awards, including a Golden Globe for Williams. His performance led the way for other animated films to incorporate actors with more star power.
He was named a Disney Legend in 2009. Williams continued to provide voices in other animated films, including FernGully: The Last Rainforest, Robots, Happy Feet, and an uncredited vocal performance in Everyone's Hero.
He also voiced the holographic Dr. Know character in the live-action film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. He was 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. In 2006, he 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. At the time of his death in 2014,
Williams had appeared in four movies not yet released: Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, A Merry Friggin' Christmas, Boulevard and Absolutely Anything.
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