Robin Williams

Robin Williams
Williams entertaining the crew of USS Enterprise in the Persian Gulf in December 2003 wearing T-shirt saying "I love (Heart) New York" in Arabic
Spouse	Valerie Velardi (1978–1988) (1 child) Marsha Garces Williams (1989–2008) (2 children)

Robin McLaurim Williams (born July 21, 1951 or 1952) is an Academy Award-, six-time Golden Globe-, two-time Screen Actors Guild Award- and Grammy Award-winning American actor and comedian who has done television, stage and film work. In part, his big break was from playing Mork from Ork, which was highlighted on Mork & Mindy. Soon afterward he became a film star who is still active as an actor and headlining comic. He was voted 13th on Comedy Central Presents: 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time.

Biography

Early life

Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois. His mother, Laura McLaurim (née Smith, 1922–2001), was a former model from Jackson, Mississippi. His father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams (September 10 1906–October 18, 1987) was a senior executive at Ford in charge of the Midwest area. Williams was raised in the Episcopal Church, though his mother practiced Christian Science, and he grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and Marin County, California. He has two half-brothers: McLaurin and the late Todd (deceased August 14, 2007). While in California, Williams attended Redwood High School in Larkspur and grew up in the Marin County suburb of Tiburon. In Michigan, he attended Detroit Country Day School, an exclusive college-preparatory school, which boasts other famous alumni, including Steve Ballmer from Microsoft and Courtney Vance from Law and Order: Criminal Intent.

Williams has described himself as a quiet child whose first imitation was of his grandmother to his mom. He did not overcome his shyness until he became involved with his high school drama department. In high school, he won an award for "Most Likely To Not Succeed".

In 1973, Williams was one of only 20 students accepted into the freshman class at Juilliard. Even more impressive, Williams, along with Christopher Reeve, were the only students accepted by John Houseman into the Advanced Program at the school that year. Reeve and Williams had several classes together in which they were the only two students. In their dialects class, Williams had no trouble mastering all dialects quickly, whereas Reeve was more meticulous about it. Williams's manic comedy did not impress all of his teachers, but his dramatic performances impressed everyone. Williams and Reeve developed a close friendship, and they remained good friends for the rest of Reeve's life. Williams visited Reeve after the horseback riding accident that paralyzed him from the neck down 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 first achieved notice for his stand-up routines, performing for tips only, and working at clubs like The Purple Onion in San Francisco. He has been accused, especially in recent years, of stealing jokes from other comedians and even paying for material after the fact.

After appearing in the cast of the short-lived The Richard Pryor Show on NBC, he was cast by Garry Marshall as the alien Mork in a guest role in the TV series Happy Days.

As Mork, Williams improvised much of his dialogue and devised plenty of rapid-fire verbal 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 and Mindy, which ran from 1978 to 1982. Williams became an overnight sensation, and Mork was featured on posters, coloring books, lunchboxes, and other merchandise. His nonsensical catch phrases, including the greeting "Nanu, Nanu!" and the expletive "Shazbot!", were widely known.

Starting in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Williams began to reach a wider audience with his standup comedy, including three HBO comedy specials, Off The Wall (1978), An Evening with Robin Williams (1982), and Robin Williams: Live at the Met (1986). His standup work has been a consistent thread through his career, as is 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.

After some encouragement from his friend Whoopi Goldberg, he was set to make a guest appearance in the 1991 Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "A Matter of Time", but he had to cancel due to a scheduling conflict; Matt Frewer took his place as a time-traveling con man, Professor Berlingoff Rasmussen.

Williams also appeared on an episode 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?"

Cinema career

The majority of Williams's acting career has been in film, although he has given some memorable performances on stage as well (notably as Estragon in a production of Waiting for Godot with Steve Martin). His first starring roles, Popeye (1980) and The World According to Garp (1982), were both considered flops, but his performance in Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) got Williams nominated for an Academy Award and established a screen identity. Many of his roles have been comedies tinged with pathos, for example The Birdcage and Mrs. Doubtfire.

His role as the Genie in the animated film Aladdin was instrumental in establishing the importance of star power in voice actor casting. Later, Williams once again used his voice talents in Fern Gully, as the holographic Dr. Know in the 2001 feature "Artificial Intelligence: A.I.", the 2005 animated feature Robots, the 2006 Academy Award winning Happy Feet, and an uncredited vocal performance in 2006's Everyone's Hero. Furthermore, 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 1993, it was reported that he would play The Baker in Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, which was to be directed by Rob Reiner. The project never came to fruition, but Williams has expressed interest in someday renewing the project though he claims he'd be more likely, because of his age, to play the Mysterious Man, a girzzled forest spirit and the father of The Baker, his original role.

Williams has also starred in dramatic films, earning himself two subsequent Academy Award nominations: First for playing an unorthodox and inspiring English teacher in Dead Poets Society (1989), and later for playing a troubled homeless man in The Fisher King (1991); that same year, he played an adult Peter Pan in the movie Hook. Other acclaimed dramatic films include Awakenings (1990) and What Dreams May Come (1998).

In 1998, he won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for his role as a psychologist in Good Will Hunting. However, by the early 2000s, he was thought by some to be typecast in films such as Patch Adams (1998) and Bicentennial Man (1999) that critics complained were excessively maudlin. This apparently prompted Williams to take radically unconventional roles, beginning with a role as a lowlife kiddie show host in the dark comedy Death to Smoochy, followed by One Hour Photo in a watershed performance as an obsessed film developer, Insomnia as a sociopathic writer, and The Final Cut, which is more in tune with Williams as a protagonist. In 2006 Williams starred in The Night Listener, a thriller about a radio show host who realizes he's developed a friendship with a child who may or may not exist.

He is known for his wild improvisational skills and impersonations. His performances frequently involve 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. He is a talented mimic and can jump in and out of characters and various accents at an extremely fast pace. Williams states that he began doing impersonations as a child, mimicking his aunt's southern accent.

In 2006, he starred in five movies including Man of the Year and was the Surprise Guest at the 2006 Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards. He appeared on an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition that aired on January 30 2006. Via a live video link to the De'Aeth family whose house and animal rescue shelter were being made over, he encouraged their son Cory, a budding comedian, and gave the family's shelter a recreational vehicle used in the movie R.V..

At one point, he was in the running to play the Riddler in Batman Forever until director Tim Burton dropped the project. Williams had earlier been a prime candidate 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 taken by Heath Ledger.

He was portrayed by Chris Diamantopoulos in the made-for-TV biopic Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Mork & Mindy (2005), documenting the actor's arrival in Hollywood as a struggling comedian and becoming an overnight star when he landed the role in Mork & Mindy.

Personal life

His first marriage was to Valerie Velardi on June 4 1978, with whom he has one child, Zachary Pym (Zak) (born April 11, 1983). The marriage ended in 1988.

During Williams' 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 he gave her herpes without notifying her. The case was settled out of court.

On April 30, 1989, he married Marsha Garces, his son's babysitter. They have two children, Zelda Rae (born July 31, 1989) and Cody Alan (born November 25, 1991). Williams currently resides in a large house in the upper-income Sea Cliff neighborhood of San Francisco. However, in March 2008, Garces filed for divorce from Williams, citing irreconcilable differences.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Williams had a serious addiction to cocaine; he has since quit. Williams was a close friend and frequent partier alongside John Belushi. He says the death of his friend and the birth of his son prompted him to quit drugs: "Was it a wake-up call? Oh yeah, on a huge level. The grand jury helped too". He was also quoted as saying, "Cocaine is God's way of telling you, you're making too much money."

On August 9, 2006, Williams entered himself into a rehabilitation center for alcoholism. 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. He asks that you respect his and his family's privacy during this time. He looks forward to returning to work this fall to support his upcoming film releases."

On August 20, 2007, Williams' elder brother, Robert Todd Williams, died of complications from heart surgery performed in July. Robin Williams gave a speech at his memorial service.

Williams frequently visits Australia during his holidays, he has expressed interest in getting citizenship when he retires from his active movie career.

On March 21, 2008, Williams' second wife Marsha filed a divorce petition in San Francisco.

Other interests

Williams is an avid enthusiast of games, and is known to enjoy both pen-and-paper role-playing games and online video games, recently playing Warcraft 3, Day of Defeat, Half-Life, and the first-person shooter Battlefield 2 as a sniper.. His daughter, Zelda, is named after Princess Zelda from the Legend of Zelda series of video games.

On January 6, 2006, he performed live at 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.

He is known to collect shoes including Nike sb and Bape, and speaks fluent French.

Williams is a fan of professional road cycling. During the Lance Armstrong years of domination in the Tour de France, Williams was a regular on the US Postal and Discovery Channel Pro Cycling team bus and hotels.

Robin is a big fan of the popular anime series, Neon Genesis Evangelion. The toy used in One Hour Photo belonged to him.

Charity work

Williams and his estranged wife, Marsha, founded the Windfall Foundation, a philanthropic organization to raise money for many different charities. Williams devotes much of his energy doing work for charities, including the Comic Relief fund-raising efforts. He is also a cycling fan, known to own hundreds of bicycles and to attend the Tour de France. Through his interest in cycling, he has been a friend and supporter of the Lance Armstrong Foundation, performing at events for the foundation.

In December 1999, he sang in French on the BBC-inspired music video of international celebrities doing a cover of the Rolling Stones's "It's Only Rock & Roll" for the charity Children's Promise.

In 2006, he helped fund and also wrote the foreword to the book Home Wasn't Built in a Day with the nonprofit writing center 826 Valencia. The book was written by public school students from Galileo Academy of Science and Technology in San Francisco.

Williams has performed in the USO for U.S. troops stationed in Iraq for four years. As recently as January 24–25, 2007, he performed two live stand-up comedy shows in Boston, MA. Donations from the events were split between the USO Operation Care Package and the Greater Boston Food Bank.

Robin Williams joined Kid Rock, Lance Armstrong, Rachel Smith (Miss USA 2007), and Lewis Black on December 20, 2007, at LSA Anaconda Balad, Iraq, and on December 22, 2007, at Naval Station Rota, Spain.

He is also a celebrity spokesperson for the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. He appears regularly on TV to promote and solicit donations for this institution which is dedicated to researching and curing cancers in children.

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1980	Popeye	Popeye	Film debut
1982	The World According to Garp	T.S. Garp
1983	The Survivors	Donald Quinelle
1984	Moscow on the Hudson	Vladimir Ivanov
1986	Seize the Day	Tommy Wilhelm
	Club Paradise	Jack Moniker
	The Best of Times	Jack Dundee
1987	Good Morning, Vietnam	Adrian Cronauer	Nominated for an Academy Award.
1988	The Adventures of Baron Munchausen	King of the Moon	Credited as Ray D. Tutto
	Portrait of a White Marriage	Air Conditioning Salesman	Cameo
1989	Dead Poets Society	John Keating	Williams nominated for Best Actor Oscar. Film won Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay
	Back to Neverland	Vacationer/Lost Boy	Co-starred with Walter Cronkite in this video that used to play at the Disney-MGM Studios's Animation Courtyard theatre.
1990	Awakenings	Dr. Malcolm Sayer
	Cadillac Man	Joey O'Brien
1991	Hook	Peter Banning/Peter Pan
	The Fisher King	Parry	Nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role
	Dead Again	Doctor Cozy Carlisle
1992	Toys	Leslie Zevo
	Aladdin	Genie	Voice, won a Special Golden Globe for his performance.
	The Timekeeper (or From Time to Time or LeVisionarium)	The Timekeeper	Voice; short subject; this is a former Circle-Vision 360° film at Walt Disney World, Disneyland Paris and Tokyo Disneyland.
	FernGully: The Last Rainforest	Batty Koda	Voice
	Shakes the Clown	Mime Class Instructor
	I'm From Hollywood		Documentary
1993	Mrs. Doubtfire	Daniel Hillard / Mrs. Doubtfire	Also producer; Won a Golden Globe for his performance in this film
	Being Human	Hector
1994	In Search of Dr. Seuss	Father
1995	Aladdin and the King of Thieves	Genie	Voice; direct to video
	Jumanji	Alan Parrish
	To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar	John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt	Cameo (uncredited)
	Nine Months	Dr. Kosevich
1996	Hamlet	Osric
	The Secret Agent	The Professor
	Jack	Jack Powell
	The Birdcage	Armand Goldman
1997	Good Will Hunting	Sean Maguire	Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
	Flubber	Professor Philip Brainard
	Deconstructing Harry	Mel/Harry's Character
	Fathers' Day	Dale Putley
1998	Patch Adams	Hunter "Patch" Adams
	Junket Whore		Documentary
	What Dreams May Come	Chris Nielsen
1999	Bicentennial Man	Andrew Martin
	Jakob the Liar	Jakob Heym/Narrator	Also executive producer
	Get Bruce		Documentary
2000	Model Behavior	Faremain
2001	A.I.: Artificial Intelligence	Dr. Know	Voice
2002	The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch		Cameo
	Insomnia	Walter Finch
	Death to Smoochy	'Rainbow' Randolph Smiley
	One Hour Photo	Sy Parrish
2004	Noel	Charlie Boyd/The Priest	Uncredited
	House of D	Pappass
	The Final Cut	Alan W. Hakman
2005	In Search of Ted Demme
	The Big White	Paul Barnell
	Robots	Fender	Voice
	The Aristocrats	Himself	Documentary
2006
	Night at the Museum	Teddy Roosevelt
	Man of the Year	Tom Dobbs
	Happy Feet	Ramon/Lovelace	Voice
	Everyone's Hero	Napoleon Cross	Voice (uncredited)
	RV	Bob Munro
	The Night Listener	Gabriel Noone
2007	License to Wed	Reverend Frank
	August Rush	Maxwell "Wizard" Wallace
2009	Old Dogs		post-production
	The Krazees		Filming

Discography

Williams sings a version of "Come Together" with Bobby McFerrin on In My Life, a Beatles tribute album produced by George Martin. He also sings "A Mi Manera (My Way)", on the Happy Feet soundtrack. For the 1993 soundtrack of Mrs. Doubtfire, and the film, he sings a rendition of a fragment of Gioacchino Rossini's "Largo al factotum" from The Barber of Seville.

Williams also appeared in the music video of McFerrin's hit song "Don't Worry, Be Happy".

In December 1999, he sang in French on the charity celebrity (music video) cover of the Rolling Stones "It's Only Rock & Roll" (see Charity Work).

• Reality...What a Concept (1979)
• Throbbing Python of Love (1983)
• A Night at the Met (1986)
• Pecos Bill (1988)
• Live 2002 (2002)

DVDs and videos

• An Evening with Robin Williams (1982, VHS)
• Robin Williams: Live at the Met (1986, VHS)
• Robin Williams: Live on Broadway (2002)

Television guest appearances

• Robert Ellison: Homicide: Life on the Street (1994)
• Thomas: Friends (1997)
• George Martin: In My Life (1998)
• Himself on the American version of Whose Line is it Anyway? (2000)
• Himself: "That's F**king Historical" episode of Mind of Mencia (2006)
• Himself on Real Time With Bill Maher (2006)
• Himself on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 It Helps To Laugh (2006)
• Himself on TV Land's Sit Down Comedy with David Steinberg (2007)
• Himslef on Adult Swim's Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! (2007)
• Himself on CBS's Late Show with David Letterman (2007)
• Himself on BBC's Men Who Do Comedy (2007)
• Himself on CBS's Late Show with David Letterman (2008) (First show after start of the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike)
• Himself on ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live 2008 (Segment titled "I'm Fuckin' Ben Affleck")

References

• "Road Trip with Robin"
• "Robin Williams mimic ends 'fraud'" (BBC News)
• "Robin Williams' impersonator stopped" (AskMen.com)
• "Robin Williams Enters Rehab", August 9 2006 (Access Hollywood)
• Lovece, Frank, New York Newsday (April 27 2006)

Bibliography

• Jay David (1999), The Life and Humor of Robin Williams: A Biography, New York: Quill, ISBN 978-068815245-1
• Andy Dougan (1999), Robin Williams: A Biography, Thunder's Mouth Press, ISBN 978-156025213-9
• Stephen J. Spignesi (1997), The Robin Williams Scrapbook, Secaucus, NJ: Carol Pub., ISBN 978-080651891-6

External links

• Robin Williams at IMDb
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• Robin Williams at the TCM Movie Database
• Robin Williams at the Internet Broadway Database
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• Robin Williams Interview (License to Wed)
• Robin Williams interview for License to Wed at TheCinemaSource.com
• Charlie Rose - A conversation with Robin Williams

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