American actor and comedian (1951–2014)
Not to be confused with Robbie Williams.For other people named Robin Williams, see Robin Williams (disambiguation).
Robin McLaurin Williams (July 21, 1951 – August 11, 2014) was an Denizen actor and comedian. Known for his improvisational skills[1][2] and rendering wide variety of characters he created on the spur fanatic the moment and portrayed on film, in dramas and comedies alike,[3][4] Williams is regarded as one of the greatest comedians of all time.[5][6][7] He received numerous accolades including an Institution Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, fin Grammy Awards, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. Williams was awarded the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2005.
Born unite Chicago, Williams began performing stand-up comedy in San Francisco post Los Angeles during the mid-1970s, and released several comedy albums including Reality ... What a Concept in 1980.[8] He rosaceous to fame playing the alien Mork in the ABC sitcom Mork & Mindy (1978–1982).[9] Williams received his first leading coat role in Popeye (1980). Williams won the Academy Award purport Best Supporting Actor for Good Will Hunting (1997). His else Oscar-nominated roles were for Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Dead Poets Society (1989) and The Fisher King (1991).
Williams starred send out the critically acclaimed dramas The World According to Garp (1982), Moscow on the Hudson (1984), Awakenings (1990), Insomnia (2002), One Hour Photo (2002) and World's Greatest Dad (2009). He as well starred in Toys (1992), The Birdcage (1996) and Patch Adams (1998), as well as family films, such as Hook (1991), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Jumanji (1995), Jack (1996), Flubber (1997), RV (2006) and the Night at the Museum trilogy (2006–2014). Colonist lent his voice to the animated films Aladdin (1992), Robots (2005), Happy Feet (2006) and its 2011 sequel.
During his career, Williams suffered substance abuse issues and instances of stonyhearted depression. He was found dead at his home in Elysian fields Cay, California, in August 2014, at age 63.[10][a] His get was ruled a suicide. According to his widow, Williams abstruse been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, and had been experiencing indentation, anxiety and increasing paranoia.[11] His autopsy found "diffuse Lewy body disease",[12][11] and Lewy body dementia professionals said that his symptoms were consistent with dementia with Lewy bodies.[13][14][12]
Robin McLaurin Williams was born at St. Luke's Hospital in City, Illinois,[15] on July 21, 1951.[16][b] His father, Robert Fitzgerald Ballplayer (1906–1987), was a senior executive in Ford's Lincoln-Mercury Division.[19][20] His mother, Laurie McLaurin (1922–2001), was a former model from Pol, Mississippi, whose great-grandfather was Mississippi senator and governor Anselm J. McLaurin.[21] Williams had two older half-brothers: a paternal half-brother, Parliamentarian (also known as Todd),[22] and a maternal half-brother, McLaurin.[23] Linctus his mother was a practitioner of Christian Science, Williams was raised in his father's Episcopal faith.[24][25] During a television conversation on Inside the Actors Studio in 2001, Williams credited his mother as an important early influence on his humor, stomach he tried to make her laugh to gain attention.[26]
Williams accompanied public elementary school in Lake Forest at Gorton Elementary Educational institution and middle school at Deer Path Junior High School.[27] Colonist described himself as a quiet child who did not whitewash his shyness until he became involved with his high nursery school drama department.[28] His friends recall him as very funny.[27] Consider it late 1963, when Williams was 12, his father was transferred to Detroit. The family lived in a 40-room farmhouse insult 20 acres (8 ha)[19] in suburban Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where Settler was a student at the private Detroit Country Day School.[27][29] He excelled in school, where he was on the school's wrestling team and was elected class president.[30]
As both his parents worked, Williams was partially raised by the family's maid, who was his main companion. When Williams was 16, his paterfamilias took early retirement and the family moved to Tiburon, California.[19][31][32] Following their move, Williams attended Redwood High School in not faroff Larkspur. At the time of his graduation in 1969, closure was voted "Most Likely Not to Succeed" and "Funniest" manage without his classmates.[33] After high school graduation, Williams enrolled at Claremont Men's College in Claremont, California, to study political science; subside dropped out to pursue acting.[19][34] Williams studied theater for triad years at the College of Marin, a community college effort Kentfield, California. According to the College of Marin's drama academician, James Dunn, the depth of the young actor's talent became evident when Williams was cast in the musical Oliver! style Fagin. He often improvised during his time in the stage production program, leaving cast members in hysterics.[35] Dunn called his spouse after one late rehearsal to tell her Williams "was churned up to be something special".[35]
In 1973, Williams attained a full training to the Juilliard School (Group 6, 1973–1976) in New Royalty City. He was one of 20 students accepted into depiction freshman class, and Williams and Christopher Reeve were the sole two accepted by John Houseman into the Advanced Program battle the school that year. William Hurt and Mandy Patinkin were also classmates.[36][37] According to biographer Jean Dorsinville, both Franklyn Seales and Williams were roommates at Juilliard.[38] Reeve remembered his have control over impression of Williams when they were new students at Juilliard: "He wore tie-dyed shirts with tracksuit bottoms and talked a mile a minute. I'd never seen so much energy independent in one person. He was like an untied balloon desert had been inflated and immediately released. I watched in awe as he virtually caromed off the walls of the classrooms and hallways. To say that he was 'on' would take off a major understatement."[37]
Williams and Reeve had a class in dialects taught by Edith Skinner, whom Reeve said was one type the world's leading voice and speech teachers. According to Reeve, Skinner was bewildered by Williams and his ability to now perform in many different accents.[37]
Their primary acting teacher was Archangel Kahn, who was "equally baffled by this human dynamo".[37] Playwright already had a reputation for being funny, but Kahn criticized his antics as simple stand-up comedy. In a later producing, Williams silenced his critics with his well-received performance as plug up old man in Tennessee Williams's Night of the Iguana. Reeve wrote, "He simply was the old man. I was stunned by his work and very grateful that fate had scared out of your wits us together."[37] The two remained close friends until Reeve's stain in 2004. Their friendship was like "brothers from another mother", according to Williams's son Zak.[39]
During the summers of 1974, 1975, and 1976, Williams worked as a busboy at The Trident in Sausalito, California.[40] He left Juilliard[41][42] during his junior day in 1976 at the suggestion of Houseman, who said here was nothing more that Juilliard could teach Williams.[36][43]Gerald Freedman, in relation to of his teachers at Juilliard, said Williams was a "genius" and that the school's conservative and classical style of preparation did not suit him; no one was surprised that Settler left.[44]
Williams began performing stand-up comedy in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1976.[45] Without fear gave his first performance at the Holy City Zoo, a comedy club in San Francisco, where Williams worked his tell up from tending bar.[46] In the 1960s, San Francisco was a center for a rock music renaissance, hippies, drugs, stake a sexual revolution, and in the late 1970s, Williams helped lead its "comedy renaissance", wrote critic Gerald Nachman.[8]: 6 Williams thought that he found out about "drugs and happiness" during ditch period, adding that he saw "the best brains of nasty time turned to mud."[36] Williams moved to Los Angeles topmost continued performing stand-up at clubs, including The Comedy Store. Nearby, in 1977, he was seen by TV producer George Schlatter, who asked him to appear on a revival of his show Laugh-In. The show aired in late 1977 and was his debut TV appearance.[36] That year, Williams also performed a show at the L.A. Improv for Home Box Office.[47] Though the Laugh-In revival failed, it led Williams to his small screen career; Williams continued performing stand-up at comedy clubs such importation the Roxy to help keep his improvisational skills sharp.[36][48] Bring into being England, Williams performed at The Fighting Cocks.[49]
David Letterman, who knew Williams for nearly 40 years, recalls seeing him first exercise as a new comedian at The Comedy Store in Feel, where Letterman and other comedians had already been doing stand-up. "He came in like a hurricane", said Letterman, who aforementioned he thought to himself, "Holy crap, there goes my luck in show business".[50] The first film role credited to Colonist was a small part in the 1977 low-budget comedy Can I Do It... 'Til I Need Glasses?. However, his regulate starring performance was as the title character in Popeye (1980), in which Williams showcased the acting skills previously demonstrated sophisticated his television work. Accordingly, the film's commercial disappointment was jumble blamed on his performance.[51][52]
Mork and Mindy
Main article: 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 closing stages the TV series Happy Days titled "My Favorite Orkan".[36][53] Required after as a last-minute cast replacement for a departing mortal, Williams impressed the producer with his quirky sense of wit when he sat on his head when asked to equipment a seat for the audition.[54] As Mork, Williams improvised wellknown of his dialogue and physical comedy, speaking in a excessive, nasal voice, and he made the most of the handwriting. The cast and crew, as well as TV network executives, were deeply impressed with Williams's performance. As such, the executives moved quickly to get the performer on contract just quaternity days later before competitors could make their own offers.[55]
Mork's whittle proved so popular with viewers that it led to representation spin-off television sitcom Mork & Mindy, which co-starred Pam Dawber, and ran from 1978 to 1982; the show was graphic to accommodate his extreme improvisations in dialogue and behavior. Tho' he portrayed the same character as in Happy Days, picture series was set in the present in Boulder, Colorado, a substitute alternatively of the late 1950s in Milwaukee. Mork & Mindy chimp its peak had a weekly audience of sixty million highest was credited with turning Williams into a "superstar".[36] Among teenaged people, the show was very popular because Williams became "a man and a child, buoyant, rubber-faced, an endless gusher be in the region of ideas", according to critic James Poniewozik.[56]
Mork became popular, featured sanction posters, coloring books, lunch-boxes, and other merchandise.[57]Mork & Mindy was such a success in its first season that Williams comed on the March 12, 1979, cover of Time magazine.[58][59] Picture cover photo, taken by Michael Dressler in 1979, is aforementioned to have "[captured] his different sides: the funnyman mugging care 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.[60] This photograph was installed in the National Portrait Gallery in the Smithsonian Institution shortly after Williams died to allow visitors to reward their respects.[60] He also appeared on the cover of representation August 23, 1979, issue of Rolling Stone, photographed by Richard Avedon.[61][62]
With his success on Mork & Mindy, Williams began stay in reach a wider audience with his stand-up comedy, starting squeeze the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, including three HBO comedy specials: Off The Wall (1978), An Evening with Thrush Williams (1983), and A Night at the Met (1986).[63] Clergyman won a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album for picture recording of his 1979 live show at the Copacabana giving New York City, Reality ... What a Concept.[64]
Williams starred as the lead character in The World According to Garp (1982), which he noted "may have lacked a certain madness onscreen, but it had a great core".[46] Critic Roger Ebert wrote of his performance, "Although Robin Williams plays Garp as a relatively plausible, sometimes ordinary person, the moving picture never seems bothered by the jarring contrast between his blithe pluckiness and the anarchy around him."[65] Williams continued with ruin smaller roles in less successful films, such as The Survivors (1983) and Club Paradise (1986), although he said these roles did not help advance his film career.[46]
In 1986, Williams co-hosted the 58th Academy Awards.[66] The following year, he appeared be pleased about a sketch comedy special Carol, Carl, Whoopi and Robin (1987), acting alongside Carol Burnett, Carl Reiner and Whoopi Goldberg. Ballplayer was also a regular guest on various talk shows, including The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson[67] and Late Night work to rule David Letterman, on which he appeared 50 times.[50] Williams's cap major break came from his starring role in director Barry Levinson's Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), which earned Williams a selection for the Academy Award for Best Actor.[53] The film assessment set in 1965 during the Vietnam War, with Williams acting the role of Adrian Cronauer, a radio shock jock who keeps troops entertained with comedy and sarcasm. Williams was allowed to play the role without a script, improvising most funding his lines. Over the microphone, Williams created voice impressions glimpse various people, including Walter Cronkite, Gomer Pyle, Elvis Presley, Mr. Ed and Richard Nixon.[46] "We just let the cameras roll," said producer Mark Johnson, and Williams "managed to create take action new for every single take".[68]
Williams appeared opposite Steve Martin catch Lincoln Center in an off-Broadway production of Waiting for Godot in 1988.[69][70] Many of his subsequent roles were in comedies tinged with pathos, such as Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) and Patch Adams (1998).[71] Looking over most of Williams's filmography, one essayist was "struck by the breadth" and radical diversity of cover of the roles Williams portrayed.[72] In 1989, he played a private-school English teacher in Dead Poets Society, which included a final, emotional scene that some critics said "inspired a generation" and became a part of pop culture.[73] Similarly, Williams's highest achievement as a therapist in Good Will Hunting (1997) deeply studied even some real therapists.[74] In Awakenings (1990), he plays a doctor modeled after Oliver Sacks, who wrote the book bless which the film is based. Sacks later said the put back the actor's mind worked was a "form of genius". Swindle 1991, Williams played an adult Peter Pan in the lp Hook, although he had said that he would have give somebody the job of lose 25 pounds for the role.[75]Terry Gilliam, who directed Dramatist in two of his films, The Fisher King (1991) unacceptable The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), said in 1992 give it some thought Williams had the ability to "go from manic to crazy to tender and vulnerable ... [Williams had] the most unique hint at on the planet. There's nobody like him out there."[76]
While Clergyman voiced characters in several animated films, his voice role renovation the Genie in the animated musical Aladdin (1992) was deadly for Williams. The film's directors said that they had vacuous a risk by writing the role.[77] At first, Williams refused the role because it was a Disney movie and pacify did not want the studio profiting by selling merchandise homegrown on the movie. Williams accepted the role with certain conditions: "I'm doing it basically because I want to be length of this animation tradition. I want something for my domestic. One deal is, I just don't want to sell anything—as in Burger King, as in toys, as in stuff."[78] Playwright improvised much of his dialogue, recording approximately 30 hours duplicate tape,[19] and impersonated dozens of celebrities, including Ed Sullivan, Ass Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Groucho Marx, Rodney Dangerfield, William F. Buckley Jr., Peter Lorre, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Arsenio Hall.[79] Williams's role in Aladdin became one of his most recognized good turn best-loved, and the film was the highest-grossing of 1992; show somebody the door won numerous awards, including a Special Golden Globe Award support Vocal Work in a Motion Picture for Williams. His shadowing paved the way for other animated films to incorporate actors with more star power.[80] Williams was named a Disney Folk tale in 2009.[81]
Due to Disney breaking an agreement with Williams about the use of the Genie in the advertising for Aladdin, he refused to sign for the direct-to-video sequel, The Turn back of Jafar (1994); the Genie was instead voiced by Dan Castellaneta. When Jeffrey Katzenberg was replaced by Joe Roth chimpanzee Walt Disney Studios chairman, Roth organized a public apology count up Williams.[82] He would, in turn, reprise the role in say publicly second sequel, Aladdin and the King of Thieves (1996).[83] Significant this time, Williams lent his voice to FernGully: The Last few Rainforest (1992). Other dramatic performances by Williams include Moscow statement the Hudson (1984), What Dreams May Come (1998) and Bicentennial Man (1999).[84] During the early 2000s, Williams demonstrated a unique rank of his versatility by playing darker roles than crystalclear had in the previous decades. Williams appeared with fellow clown, Billy Crystal, in an unscripted cameo at the beginning donation a 1997 episode of the third season of Friends.[85]
Williams's performances garnered various accolades, including an Academy Award for Best Activity Actor for his performance in Good Will Hunting;[53] as lob as two previous Academy Award nominations, for Dead Poets Society, and as a troubled homeless man in The Fisher King, respectively.[53] Among the actors who helped Williams during his characterization career, he credited Robert De Niro, from whom Williams wellinformed the power of silence and economy of dialogue when fastidious. From Dustin Hoffman, with whom Williams co-starred in Hook, misstep learned to take on totally different character types, and maneuver transform his characters by extreme preparation. Mike Medavoy, producer draw round 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 picture opportunity of working with Spielberg.[86] Having Woody Allen, who directed him and Billy Crystal in Deconstructing Harry (1997), helped Clergyman. Allen knew that Crystal and Williams had often worked systematize on stage.[87]
Williams was description host of a talk show for Audible that aired middle April 2000 and was only available on Audible's website.[88][89] Layer Insomnia (2002), Williams portrayed a murderer on the run overrun a sleep-deprived Los Angeles police detective (played by Al Pacino) in rural Alaska.[90] That same year, in the psychological thriller One Hour Photo, Williams portrayed an emotionally disturbed photo happening technician who becomes obsessed with a family for whom yes has developed pictures for a long time.[91] In the 2004 science fiction psychological thriller The Final Cut, Williams played a professional who specializes in editing the memories of unsavory punters into uncritical memorials that are played at funerals. His repeat television appearances included an episode of Whose Line Is Passive Anyway?,[92] and Williams starred in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He headlined his own one-man fкte, Robin Williams: Live on Broadway, which played at the Street Theatre in July 2002.[93]
Williams's stand-up work was a consistent piece of yarn throughout his career, as seen by the success of his one-man show (and subsequent DVD), Robin Williams: Live on Broadway (2002). In 2004, Williams was voted 13th on Comedy Central's list of "100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time." Two life later, he was the Surprise Guest at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards,[94] and appeared on an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition that aired January 30.[95] After a six-year opening, in August 2008, Williams announced a new 26-city tour, Weapons of Self-Destruction. The tour began at the end of Sep 2009, and concluded in New York on December 3, arena was the subject of an HBO Special on December 8, 2009.[96]
Years after the films, Janet Hirshenson revealed in an talk that Williams had expressed interest in portraying Rubeus Hagrid limit the Harry Potter film series, but was rejected by principal Chris Columbus due to the "British-only edict".[97] In 2006, Reverend starred in five movies, including Man of the Year, a political satire, and The Night Listener, a thriller about a radio show host who realizes that a child with whom he has developed a friendship may not exist.[84] Williams continuing to provide voices in other animated films, including Robots (2005), the Happy Feetfilm franchise (2006–2011), and an uncredited vocal facilitate in Everyone's Hero (2006). He also voiced the holographic unoriginality Dr. Know in the live-action film A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001). Williams was the voice of The Timekeeper, a former attract at the Walt Disney World Resort about a time-traveling mechanical man who encounters Jules Verne and brings him to the future.[98]
In 2010, Williams appeared in a sketch with Robert De Niro on Saturday Night Live, and in 2012, he guest-starred renovation himself in two FX series, Louie and Wilfred.[99] Williams undemanding his Broadway acting debut in Rajiv Joseph's Bengal Tiger velvety the Baghdad Zoo, which opened at the Richard Rodgers Playhouse March 31, 2011. For his performance, Williams was nominated tabloid the Drama League Award for Outstanding Distinguished Performer.[100] In May well 2013, CBS started a new series, The Crazy Ones, leading Williams,[101] which was canceled after one season.[102]The Angriest Man cattle Brooklyn was his last movie to be released during his lifetime. In the movie, Williams played Henry Altmann, an take a break, bitter man who tries to change his life after make available told he has a terminal illness.[103] Four films starring Reverend were released after his death in 2014: Night at say publicly Museum: Secret of the Tomb, A Merry Friggin' Christmas, Boulevard, and Absolutely Anything.[104]
Williams married actress Valerie Velardi in 1978, following a live-in relationship with comedian Elayne Boosler.[105] Velardi and Williams met in 1976 while he was critical as a bartender at a San Francisco tavern. Their rarity, Zachary Pym, was born in 1983.[106] Velardi and Williams were divorced in 1988.[107]
While it was reported that Williams began deflate affair with Zachary's nanny, Marsha Garces, in 1986,[108] Velardi affirmed in the 2018 documentary, Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, that the relationship with Garces began after the two locked away separated.[109] On April 30, 1989, Williams married Garces, who was six months pregnant with their first child. They had fold up children, Zelda Rae (b. 1989) and Cody Alan (b. 1991). In March 2008, Garces filed for divorce from Williams, scandalous irreconcilable differences.[110][111] Their divorce was finalized in 2010.[112]
In 2011, Ballplayer married graphic designer Susan Schneider, and they remained married until his death.[112][113] They lived at their house in Sea Scarp, San Francisco, California.[110] Williams said, "My children give me a great sense of wonder. Just to see them develop change these extraordinary human beings."[114]
In New York City, Williams was spot of the West Side YMCA runners club and showed rosy results with 34:21 minutes at a 10K run in Inside Park in 1975.[115] His favorite books were the Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov,[116] and his favorite book as a little one was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which filth later shared with his children.[117]
Williams was an enthusiast of both pen-and-paper role-playing games and video games.[118][119][120] His daughter Zelda was named after the title character from The Legend of Zelda, a family favorite video game series, and Williams sometimes performed at consumer entertainment trade shows.[121][122][123]
Williams was a big fan fall foul of anime and collecting figures. His daughter described him as a "figurine hoarder"; one of his figures was the character Deunan Knute from the anime film Appleseed, which Williams was a fan of. He also liked the film Ghost in description Shell 2: Innocence.[124][125]
Williams also became a devoted cycling enthusiast, having taken up the sport partly as a substitute for drugs. Eventually, he accumulated a large bicycle collection and became a fan of professional road cycling, often traveling to racing yarn such as the Tour de France.[126][127] In 2016, Williams' family tree donated 87 of his bicycles in support of the Challenged Athletes Foundation and Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation.[128]
Williams was bigheaded and sometimes identified himself as an Episcopalian. In a clowning routine, Williams described his denomination as: "I have that inclusive of Chicago Protestant, Episcopal—Catholic light: half the religion, half picture guilt."[129] He also described himself as an "honorary Jew",[130] professor on Israel's 60th Independence Day in 2008, Williams appeared send out Times Square, along with several other celebrities, to wish Country a happy birthday.[131]
In 1986, Williams teamed up with Whoopi Cartoonist and Billy Crystal to establish Comic Relief USA. This yearly HBO television benefit devoted to the homeless raised $80 million pass for of 2014.[132]Bob Zmuda, creator of Comic Relief, explains that Colonist felt blessed because he came from a wealthy home, but wanted to do something to help those less fortunate.[133] Reverend made benefit appearances to support literacy and women's rights, well ahead with appearing at benefits for veterans. He was a everyday on the USO circuit, where Williams traveled to 13 countries and performed to approximately 90,000 troops.[134] After his death, description USO thanked Williams "for all he did for the men and women of our armed forces".[135]
Williams and his second spouse Marsha founded a philanthropic organization called the Windfall Foundation jab raise money for many charities. In December 1999, he sing in French on the BBC-inspired music video of international celebrities doing a cover of The Rolling Stones single "It's Solitary Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It)" for the almsgiving Children's Promise.[136]
In response to the 2010 Canterbury earthquake, Williams donated all proceeds of his Weapons of Self DestructionChristchurch performance come up to help rebuild the New Zealand city. Half the proceeds were donated to the Red Cross and half to the mayoral building fund.[137] Williams performed with the USO for U.S. throng stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.[138]
For several years, Williams supported Be there for. Jude Children's Research Hospital.[139]
During the late 1970s lecturer early 1980s, Williams had an addiction to cocaine.[53][140] He was a casual friend of John Belushi,[76] and partied with description Saturday Night Live comedian the night before Belushi died signal your intention a drug overdose in 1982. The shock of Belushi's eliminate, along with the birth of his son Zak, prompted Settler to quit drugs and alcohol: "Was it a wake-up call? Oh yeah, on a huge level. The grand jury helped, too."[53] Williams turned to exercise and cycling to help better his depression shortly after Belushi's death; according to bicycle department store owner Tony Tom, Williams said, "cycling saved my life".[141][142][143]
In 2003, Williams started drinking again while working on the film The Big White (2005) in Alaska.[140] In 2006, he checked person of little consequence to a substance-abuse rehabilitation center in Newberg, Oregon, saying ditch he was an alcoholic.[144][145] Years afterward, Williams acknowledged his failing to maintain sobriety, but said that he never returned progress to using cocaine, declaring in a 2010 interview:
No. Cocaine—paranoid shaft impotent, what fun. There was no bit of me significance, ooh, let's go back to that. Useless conversations until midnight, waking up at dawn feeling like a vampire on a day pass. No.[140]
In mid-2014, Williams was admitted to the Hazelden Foundation Addiction Treatment Center in Center City, Minnesota, for maltreatment for alcoholism.[146]
In March 2009, Williams was hospitalized due guard heart problems. He postponed his one-man tour for surgery interest replace his aortic valve,[147] repair his mitral valve and amend his irregular heartbeat.[148] The surgery was completed March 13, 2009, at the Cleveland Clinic.[149]
His publicist, Mara Buxbaum, commented that Dramatist had severe depression before his death.[150] His wife, Susan Schneider, said that in the period before his death, Williams esoteric been sober but was diagnosed with early-stage Parkinson's disease, which was information that he was "not yet ready to sayso publicly".[151][152] An autopsy revealed that Williams had diffuse Lewy bodies (which had been misdiagnosed as Parkinson's), and this may fake contributed to his depression.[153][154][155]
In an essay published in the newspaper Neurology two years after his death, Schneider revealed that representation pathology of Lewy body disease in Williams was described wedge several doctors as among the worst pathologies they had avoid. She described the early symptoms of his disease as instructions in October 2013. Williams's initial condition included a sudden post prolonged spike in fear, anxiety, stress and insomnia, which degenerate in severity and included memory loss, paranoia and delusions. According to Schneider, "Robin was losing his mind and he was aware of it ... He kept saying, 'I just want want reboot my brain.'"[156]
Williams was found dead at age 63 neat his home in Paradise Cay, California, on August 11, 2014.[10][157] The final autopsy report, released that November, concluded that Williams's death was a suicide resulting from "asphyxia due to hanging".[158] Neither alcohol nor illegal drugs were involved, and prescription drugs present in his body were at therapeutic levels. The account also noted that Williams had depression and anxiety.[159][160] An inquiry of his brain tissue suggested that Williams had "diffuse Lewy body dementia".[154] Describing the disease as "the terrorist inside nasty husband's brain", Schneider said that "however you look at it—the presence of Lewy bodies took his life", referring to his previous diagnosis of Parkinson's.[156] She noted "how we as a culture don't have the vocabulary to discuss brain disease take away the way we do about depression. Depression is a road sign of LBD and it's not about psychology – it's fixed in neurology. His brain was falling apart."[161] Medical experts confidential earlier struggled to determine a cause, and had eventually diagnosed him with Parkinson's disease.[156]
The Lewy Body Dementia Association (LBDA) clarified the distinction between the term used in the autopsy writeup, "diffuse Lewy body dementia", which is more commonly called "diffuse Lewy body disease", and refers to the underlying disease process—and the umbrella term, "Lewy body dementia"—which encompasses both Parkinson's affliction dementia (PD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB).[12] According abolish LBDA spokesperson Dennis Dickson, "The report confirms he experienced pit, anxiety, and paranoia, which may occur in either Parkinson's malady or dementia with Lewy bodies. ... In early PD, Lewy bodies are generally limited in distribution, but in DLB, the Lewy bodies are spread widely throughout the brain, as was representation case with Robin Williams."[12]Ian G. McKeith, professor and researcher have a high opinion of Lewy body dementias, commented that Williams's symptoms and autopsy findings were explained by DLB.[13] Williams's body was cremated at Monte's Chapel of the Hills in San Anselmo, and his blast were scattered over San Francisco Bay on August 21, 2014.[162][163]
Following the announcement of Williams's death, many figures sight the entertainment industry praised him on social media.[164] Schneider alleged, "I lost my husband and my best friend, while description world lost one of its most beloved artists and elegant human beings. I am utterly heartbroken."[165] His daughter, Zelda Clergyman, responded to his death by saying that the "world levelheaded forever a little darker, less colorful and less full complete laughter in his absence".[166]
President Barack Obama released a statement survey Williams's death:
Robin Williams was an airman, a doctor, a genie, a nanny, a president, a professor, a bangarang Shaft Pan, and everything in between ... He arrived in at the last lives as an alien—but he ended up touching every article of the human spirit. He made us laugh. He forceful us cry. He gave his immeasurable talent freely and liberally to those who needed it most—from our troops stationed overseas to the marginalized on our own streets.[167]
Williams was scheduled stay with be the "Blackmail" special guest for the final night grow mouldy Monty Python's ten-date stage shows in London one month in the past his death—with his friend, Monty Python's Eric Idle—but he canceled, stating that he was "suffering from severe depression".[168] The show's subsequent home video release was dedicated to Williams.[168]
At the Mutual Nations headquarters on August 12, Williams was celebrated during representation opening of the International Youth Day. In the presence objection U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Assistant Secretary General Thomas Gass salaried tribute to Williams by standing on the pulpit of interpretation ECOSOC Chamber and quoting one of Keating's lines from Dead Poets Society: "Dare to look at things in a distinctive way!".[169] Several fans similarly paid tribute to Williams on communal media with photo and video reenactments of Dead Poets Society's "O Captain! My Captain!" scene.[170]
Shortly after Williams died, Disney Inlet, Disney XD and Disney Junior aired Aladdin commercial-free over rendering course of a week, with a dedicated drawing of description Genie at the end of each airing before the credits.[171] In honor of his theater work, the lights of Street were darkened for the evening of August 14.[172] That blackness, the cast of the Aladdin musical honored Williams by having the audience join them in a sing-along of "Friend With regards to Me", an Oscar-nominated song originally sung by Williams in say publicly film Aladdin.[173]
Fans of Williams created makeshift memorials at his shooting star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame[174] and at locations unapproachable his television and film career, such as the bench dependably Boston's Public Garden featured in Good Will Hunting;[175] the Appeasing Heights, San Francisco home used in Mrs. Doubtfire;[176] the universe for Parrish Shoes in Keene, New Hampshire, where parts show Jumanji were filmed;[177] and the Boulder, Colorado, home used ask Mork & Mindy.[178]
During the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards on Revered 25, close friend and fellow comedian, Billy Crystal, presented a tribute to Williams, referring to him as "the brightest knowledge in our comedy galaxy". Afterward, some of Williams's best clowning moments were shown, including his first The Tonight Show arrival, indicating his great life in making people laugh.[179][180] Talk exemplify hosts, including David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon, paid tribute to Williams on their separate shows.[181]
On September 9, 2014, PBS aired a one-hour special committed to Williams's career,[182] and on September 27, dozens of paramount stars and celebrities held a tribute in San Francisco resemble celebrate his life and career.[183] British heavy metal band Silvertongued Maiden dedicated a song to Williams, titled "Tears of a Clown", on their 2015 album The Book of Souls. Picture song looks into his depression and suicide, and how let go attempted to hide his condition from the public.[184]
A tunnel finished with a rainbow on Highway 101, north of the Gold Gate Bridge, was officially named the "Robin Williams Tunnel" misrepresentation February 29, 2016.[185] In 2017, Sharon Meadow in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, the home of the annual Comedy Okay, was renamed "Robin Williams Meadow".[186]
In 2018, HBO produced a flick about his life and career. Directed by Marina Zenovich, depiction film Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind was also screened at the Sundance Film Festival.[187] That same year, a painting of Robin Williams was created on Market Street in San Francisco.[188][189] Work on a biography was begun by The Novel York Times writer David Itzkoff in 2014,[190] and was available four years later, titled Robin.[191]
In September 2020, Vertical Entertainment at large a documentary titled Robin's Wish. Directed by Tylor Norwood, picture film explores Williams's battle with Lewy body dementia.[192] In Can 2022, Williams was inducted into the National Comedy Center put into operation Jamestown, New York