Robin Williams American Actor and Comedian (1951–2014)

Robin McLaurin Williams was an American actor and stand-up comedian, born in Chicago on 21 July 1951. He worked across television, film, voice acting and live comedy, and died on 11 August 2014.

Early life

Williams was born at St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago to Robert Fitzgerald Williams, an executive at Ford's Lincoln-Mercury Division, and Laurie McLaurin, a former model from Jackson, Mississippi. He had two older half-brothers. The family lived in the Chicago suburbs before moving to Michigan in late 1963, where he attended Detroit Country Day School. When he was sixteen the family relocated to Tiburon, California, and he finished at Redwood High School in Larkspur in 1969. There he joined the drama club, and his classmates voted him both "Funniest" and "Most Likely Not to Succeed."

After a short period at Claremont Men's College studying political science, he left to pursue acting and spent three years in the theater program at the College of Marin. In 1973 he won a full scholarship to the Juilliard School in New York, where Christopher Reeve was among his fellow students. He left Juilliard in 1976, during his junior year, after his teacher John Houseman suggested the school had little left to teach him.

Career

Williams began performing stand-up in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1976, starting at the Holy City Zoo club, and later moved to Los Angeles, where he appeared at the Comedy Store. A guest spot on a revival of Laugh-In in 1977 marked his television debut. In 1978 he played the alien Mork in an episode of Happy Days, and the character was given his own series, Mork & Mindy, which ran from 1978 to 1982 and co-starred Pam Dawber. The show brought him a Golden Globe Award in 1979 and a Time magazine cover. His stand-up recording of a 1979 show at the Copacabana, Reality ... What a Concept, earned a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album, and he made HBO specials including A Night at the Met in 1986.

His first starring film role was the title character in Popeye (1980). He followed it with The World According to Garp (1982) and Moscow on the Hudson (1984). In 1986 he co-hosted the 58th Academy Awards. Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), in which he played radio host Adrian Cronauer and improvised much of his dialogue, brought his first Oscar nomination. He then played an English teacher in Dead Poets Society (1989), a doctor in Awakenings (1990) and a homeless man in The Fisher King (1991), all of which are credited in this period alongside the comedies Hook (1991), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Jumanji (1995), The Birdcage (1996) and Jack (1996).

He also voiced the Genie in the Disney film Aladdin (1992), a role written for him, and was named a Disney Legend in 2009. For his performance as a therapist in Good Will Hunting (1997) he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Later work included the thrillers Insomnia and One Hour Photo (both 2002), the animated films Robots (2005) and Happy Feet (2006), and the Night at the Museum series from 2006 to 2014, in which he played Theodore Roosevelt. His record lists about eighty screen credits between 1974 and 2015.

Recognition

Williams received four Oscar nominations in total: Best Actor for Good Morning, Vietnam, Dead Poets Society and The Fisher King, and a win for Good Will Hunting. He won Golden Globe Awards for Mork & Mindy, Good Morning, Vietnam and The Fisher King, along with a Golden Globe for Mrs. Doubtfire in the Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy category in 1994, and received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2005. He won several Grammy Awards, including Best Comedy Album in 1980, 1988, 1989 and 2003, and Primetime Emmy Awards for variety programming in 1987 and 1988. He also won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Good Will Hunting, Saturn Awards for Aladdin and One Hour Photo, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In total his record shows 23 wins and 31 nominations.

Personal life

Williams married three times: Valerie Velardi from 1978 to 1988, Marsha Garces from 1989 to 2010, and Susan Schneider from 2011 until his death in 2014. He had three children, among them Zelda Williams.