Actor Robin Williams has been found dead inside his home in an
apparent suicide, according to the Marin County Sheriff’s Department.
The 63-year-old actor and comedian was found dead inside his home
where he resides with his wife by Marin County Sheriff’s deputies at
noon on Monday.
“This morning, I lost my husband and my best friend, while the world
lost one of its most beloved artists and beautiful human beings. I am
utterly heartbroken,” said Williams’ wife, Susan Schneider. “On behalf
of Robin’s family, we are asking for privacy during our time of profound
grief. As he is remembered, it is our hope the focus will not be on
Robin’s death, but on the countless moments of joy and laughter he gave
to millions.”
The actor, known for his roles in “Good Will Hunting”, "Hook", "Jumanji", "Aladdin", "The Birdcage", "Flubber", "Jack" and “Good Morning
Vietnam” had been battling severe depression recently, said Mara
Buxbaum, his press representative.
President Barack Obama released a statement on the passing of Robin Williams:
Robin Williams was an airman, a doctor, a genie, a nanny,
a president, a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan, and everything in
between. But he was one of a kind. He arrived in our lives as an alien
– but he ended up touching every element of the human spirit. He made
us laugh. He made us cry. He gave his immeasurable talent freely and
generously to those who needed it most – from our troops stationed
abroad to the marginalized on our own streets. The Obama family offers
our condolences to Robin’s family, his friends, and everyone who found
their voice and their verse thanks to Robin Williams.
From his breakthrough in the late 1970s as the alien in the hit TV
show “Mork and Mindy,” through his standup act and such films as “Good
Morning, Vietnam,” the short, barrel-chested Williams ranted and shouted
as if just sprung from solitary confinement. Loud, fast, manic, he
parodied everyone from John Wayne to Keith Richards, impersonating a
Russian immigrant as easily as a pack of Nazi attack dogs.
Williams announced in recent years that he was again drinking but
rebounded well enough to joke about it during his recent tour. “I went
to rehab in wine country,” he said, “to keep my options open.”
Born in Chicago in 1951, Williams would remember himself as a shy kid
who got some early laughs from his mother – by mimicking his
grandmother. He opened up more in high school when he joined the drama
club and he was accepted into the Juilliard Academy, where he had
several classes in which he and Christopher Reeve were the only students
and John Houseman was the teacher.
Encouraged by Houseman to pursue comedy, Williams identified with the
wildest and angriest of performers: Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce,
Richard Pryor, George Carlin. Their acts were not warm and lovable. They
were just being themselves.
“You look at the world and see how scary it can be sometimes and
still try to deal with the fear,” he told the AP in 1989. “Comedy can
deal with the fear and still not paralyze you or tell you that it’s
going away. You say, OK, you got certain choices here, you can laugh at
them and then once you’ve laughed at them and you have expunged the
demon, now you can deal with them. That’s what I do when I do my act.”
He unveiled Mork, the alien from the planet Ork, in an appearance on
“Happy Days,” and was granted his own series, which ran from 1978-82.
In subsequent years, Williams often returned to television – for
appearances on “Saturday Night Live,” for “Friends,” for comedy
specials, for “American Idol,” where in 2008 he pretended to be a
“Russian idol” who belts out a tuneless, indecipherable “My Way.”
Williams also could handle a script, when he felt like it, and also
think on his feet. He ad-libbed in many of his films and was just as
quick in person. During a media tour for “Awakenings,” when director
Penny Marshall mistakenly described the film as being set in a
“menstrual hospital,” instead of “mental hospital,” Williams quickly
stepped in and joked, “It’s a period piece.”
Winner of a Grammy in 2003 for best spoken comedy album, “Robin
Williams – Live 2002,” he once likened his act to the daily jogs he took
across the Golden Gate Bridge. There were times he would look over the
edge, one side of him pulling back in fear, the other insisting he could
fly.
“You have an internal critic, an internal drive that says, ‘OK, you
can do more.’ Maybe that’s what keeps you going,” Williams said. “Maybe
that’s a demon. … Some people say, ‘It’s a muse.’ No, it’s not a muse!
It’s a demon! DO IT YOU BASTARD!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! THE LITTLE DEMON!!”
