Biography
Robin McLaurim Williams (born July 21, 1951) is an Academy Award-, Golden Globe-, and Grammy Award-winning American comedian and actor.
Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork and Mindy, and later stand up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won an Academy Award for his performance in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting, and was nominated in the 1991 film The Fisher King, and 1993’s Mrs. Doubtfire. He has also won six Golden Globes, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and three Grammy Awards, and been nominated for 2 BAFTAs.
Early life
Robin Williams is the son of Laura and Robert Williams, who were middle aged when he was born. Both had grown children from previous marriages, so Williams was raised as an only child and had much time alone with which to develop his imagination. He has one half brother, McLaurin, as well a deceased half brother Todd, who died in 2007.
His father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams (1906–1987) was a senior executive at Lincoln-Mercury Motorship in charge of the Midwest area. Williams was raised in the Episcopal Church, although his mother practiced Christian Science, and he grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan where he was a student at the Detroit Country Day School, and Marin County, California where he attended the public Redwood High School.
Robin Williams has described himself as a shy 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.
Career
In 1973, Williams along with Christopher Reeve, were among only 20 students accepted into the freshman class at Juilliard. Reeve and Williams had several classes together in which they were the only two students. In their dialects class, it was easy for Williams to master all dialects quickly, but Reeve was more meticulous about it. Williams and Reeve developed a close friendship, that lasted for the rest of Reeve’s life.
After Williams appeared in the cast of the short lived The Richard Pryor Show on NBC, he was cast by Garry Marshall as the alien Mork in the TV series in the hit show “Happy Days”.
He improvised much of his dialogue as Mork and devised plenty of rapid fire verbal and physical comedy, speaking in a high, nasal voice. Mork’s appearance became so popular with viewers that it led to the hit television sitcom, Mork and Mindy, which ran from 1978 - 1982. Mork was an extremely popular character, featuring on coloring books, posters, lunchboxes, and various other merchandise.
Starting in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Williams started reaching 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 stand-up work has been a consistent thread throughout his whole career, as can be seen by the success of his one-man show (and subsequent DVD) Robin Williams Live on Broadway (2002). He was even voted 13th on Comedy Central’s list “100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time” in 2004.
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’ acting career has been in films, however, he has given some performances on stage as well (notably as Estragon in a production of Waiting for Godot with Steve Martin). His brilliant performance in Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) got him nominated for an Academy Award. Many of his roles have been comedies tinged with pathos, in films such as The Birdcage and Mrs. Doubtfire.
His role as the Genie in the animated film Aladdin was instrumental in constituting the importance of star power in voice actor casting. Williams once again later 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. Moreover, 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.
Williams also starred in dramatic films, which did get him two subsequent Academy Award nominations: First for playing an English teacher in Dead Poets Society (1989), and later for playing a troubled homeless man in The Fisher King (1991), and 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 the 2002 dramatic thriller Insomnia, Williams plays a writer/killer on the run from a sleep deprived Los Angeles policeman (played by Al Pacino) in rural Alaska. And 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 1998, Williams won the Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for his role of 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 too sentimental. In 2006 he starred in The Night Listener, a thriller about a radio show host who realizes he has developed a friendship with a child that may or may not exist.
He is known and admired for his improvisational skills and impersonations. His performances often involve impromptu humor designed and delivered in rapid fire succession while he is on stage. According to the Aladdin DVD commentary, most of his dialogue as the Genie was improvised and conversely to all previous animation features, the animation had to be post-produced to synch with Williams’ pre-recorded voice-over.
In 2006, Williams 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.
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.
Stand-Up career
Robin Williams has done many stand-up comedy tours since the early 1970s. Some of his most famous tours include An Evening With Robin Williams (1982), Robin Williams: At The Met (1986) and Robin Williams LIVE on Broadway (2002). The latter broke many previous records for a comedy show. In some cases, the tickets were sold out within thirty minutes of going on sale!
In August 2008, Williams announced a brand new 26-city tour titled “Weapons of Self Destruction”. After a six year break from his record breaking tour, Robin decided it was the perfect time to perform again due to the material that could be generated by a presidental election. He was quoted as saying that this was his last chance to make cracks at the expense of the current Bush Administration.
In early March 2009, Williams was forced to postpone the “Weapons of Self-Destruction” tour, to undergo surgery for an aortic valve replacement. He underwent a successful heart surgery, and was expected to make a full recovery within a few weeks.
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), but he had an extra marital affair with his son‘s nanny Marsha Garces. He married her on April 30, 1989, when she was already several months pregnant with their child. They have two children, Zelda Rae (born July 31, 1989) and Cody Alan (born November 25, 1991). The couple‘s marriage didn‘t last, and in March 2008, Garces filed for divorce from Williams, citing irreconcilable difference.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Williams had an addiction to cocaine, but he has since quit. He says the death of his close friend John Belushi 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 half brother, Robert Todd Williams, died of complications from heart surgery performed one month earlier.
Charity work
Williams and his former wife, Marsha, founded the Windfall Foundation, a philanthropic organization to raise money for several different charities. Williams devotes much of his energy doing work for charities, including the Comic Relief fund-raising efforts. 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.
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