Robin McLaurin Williams (born July 21, 1951) is an
American actor and comedian.
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 the
Academy Award for Best
Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1997 film
Good Will Hunting. He has
also won three
Golden Globes, two
Screen Actors Guild Awards
and three
Grammy Awards.
Early life
Williams
was born in Chicago
,
Illinois. His mother, Laura McLaurin (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 Lincoln-Mercury Motorship in charge of the Midwest
area. Williams was raised in the
Episcopal
Church, though his mother practiced
Christian Science.
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
. Williams also attended Claremont
McKenna College
(then called Claremont Men's College) for four
years.
He has two half-brothers: McLaurin, and Todd who died August 14,
2007.
Williams has described himself as a quiet child whose first
imitation was of his grandmother to his mother. He did not overcome
his shyness until he became involved with his high-school drama
department.
In 1973,
Williams was one of only 20 students accepted into the freshman
class at the Juilliard
School
,and one of only two students to be accepted
by
John Houseman into the Advanced
Program at the school that year, the other being
Christopher Reeve. In his dialects class,
Williams had no trouble mastering all dialects quickly.
Television career
After appearing in the cast of the short-lived
The Richard Pryor Show on
NBC, Williams was cast by
Garry Marshall as the alien Mork in the hit
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.
Although playing the
same character as in his appearance in Happy Days, the show was set
in the present day, in Boulder, Colorado instead of late '50s in
Milwaukee
. Mork was an extremely popular character,
featured on posters, coloring books, lunchboxes, and other
merchandise.
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). Also in 1986,
Williams reached an even wider audience to exhibit his style at the
58th Academy Awards show; noting the Hollywood writers strike that
year he commented that the Hollywood writer... "is the only man in
the world that can blow smoke up his own a--." As a result,
Williams has never hosted the AA's again.
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 the American version 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
Most of Williams' acting career has been in film, although he has
given some performances on stage as well (notably as
Estragon in a production of
Waiting for Godot with
Steve Martin). His performance in
Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) got
Williams nominated for an
Academy Award. 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. Williams also used his voice talents in
Fern Gully,
as the holographic Dr. Know in the 2001 feature
A.I. Artificial Intelligence,
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.
Williams has also starred in dramatic films, which got 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); 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 portrays 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, 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. In 2006 Williams starred in
The Night
Listener, a thriller about a radio show host who realizes
he has developed a friendship with a child who may or may not
exist.
He is known for his
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.
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.
At one point, he was in the running to play the
Riddler in
Batman
Forever until director
Tim
Burton dropped the project. Earlier, Williams had been a strong
contender 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 played by
Heath Ledger, who posthumously went on to win
the
Academy
Award for Best Supporting Actor.
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.
Disputes with Disney
In gratitude for his success with the Disney/Touchstone film
Good Morning,
Vietnam, Robin Williams voiced the
Genie in the Disney animated film
Aladdin for
SAG scale pay ($75,000), on condition
that his name or image not be used for marketing, and his
(supporting) character not take more than 25% of space on
advertising artwork, since
Toys
was scheduled for release one month after
Aladdin's debut.
The studio went back on the deal on both counts, especially in
poster art by having the Genie in 25% of the image, but having
other major and supporting characters portrayed considerably
smaller. Disney's Hyperion book,
Aladdin: The Making Of An
Animated Film, listed both of Williams' characters "The
Peddler" and "The Genie" ahead of main characters, but was forced
to refer to him only as "the actor signed to play the Genie".
Williams and Disney had a bitter falling-out, and as a result
Dan Castellaneta voiced the Genie
in
The Return of Jafar, the
Aladdin animated
television series, and had recorded his voice for
Aladdin and
the King of Thieves. When
Jeffrey Katzenberg was fired from Disney
and replaced by former
20th Century
Fox production head
Joe Roth (whose
last act for Fox was greenlighting Williams' film
Mrs. Doubtfire), Roth arranged for a
public apology to Williams by Disney. Williams agreed to perform in
Hollywood Pictures'
Jack,
directed by
Francis Ford
Coppola, and even agreed to voice the Genie again for the
King Of Thieves sequel (for considerably more than scale),
replacing all of Castellaneta's dialogue.
When Williams re-teamed with
Doubtfire director Chris
Columbus for 1999's
Bicentennial Man, Disney asked
that the budget be cut by approximately $20 million, and when
the film was released on Christmas Day, it flopped at the box
office. Williams blamed Disney's marketing and the loss of content
the film had suffered due to the budget cuts. As a result, Williams
was again on bad terms with Disney, and Castellaneta was once again
recruited to replace him as Genie in the
Kingdom Hearts video game
series and the
House of
Mouse TV series. The DVD release for
Aladdin has
no involvement whatsoever from Williams in the bonus materials,
although some of his original recording sessions can be seen.
Robin Williams has made peace with the Walt Disney Company and in
2009 agreed to be inducted into the Disney hall of fame, designated
as a
Disney Legend.
Stand-up career
Robin Williams has done a number of stand-up comedy tours since the
early 1970s. Some of his most notable 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 long held
records for a comedy show. In some cases, 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 the time was right to perform
again due to the material that could be generated by a presidential
election. He was quoted as saying that this was his last chance to
make cracks at the expense of the current Bush
Administration.
Personal life
Robin Williams' first marriage was to Valerie Velardi on June 4,
1978, with whom he has one child, Zachary Pym (Zak) (born April 11,
1983). 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 that
he did not tell her he was infected with the
herpes simplex virus before he embarked on a sexual
relationship with her in the mid-1980's, during which, she said, he
transmitted the virus to her. The case was settled out of
court.
On April 30, 1989, he married Marsha Garces, his son's nanny who
was already several months pregnant with his child. They have two
children,
Zelda Rae (born July 31,
1989) and Cody Alan (born November 25, 1991). However, in March
2008, Garces filed for divorce from Williams, citing irreconcilable
differences.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Williams had an 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."
On August 9, 2006, Williams checked himself into a substance abuse
rehabilitation center, later admitting that he was an
alcoholic. 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 a month
earlier.
Williams is a member of the
Episcopal Church. He has
described his denomination as "
Catholic
Lite — same rituals, half the guilt."
While
studying at Juilliard
, Williams befriended Christopher Reeve. They had several
classes together in which they were the only students, and they
remained good friends for the rest of Reeve's life. Williams
visited Reeve after the horse riding accident that rendered him a
quadriplegic, 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.
Health
Williams was hospitalized in March 2009 due to heart problems.
Williams postponed his one-man tour in order to undergo surgery to
replace his
aortic valve.
The surgery was
successfully completed on March 13, 2009 at the Cleveland
Clinic
.
Other interests
Williams speaking at the 2008 BBC
World Debate
Williams is an avid enthusiast of games, enjoying 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. 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.
Later that year, he was one of several celebrities to participate
in the
Worldwide Dungeons
& Dragons Game Day.
Williams has gone on record as a fan of the anime series
Neon Genesis
Evangelion, and incorporated a scene referencing it in
One Hour Photo where he
purchases a model kit from it as a gift.
A fan of professional road cycling, he was a regular on the US
Postal and Discovery Channel Pro Cycling team bus and hotels during
the years
Lance Armstrong dominated
the
Tour de France. He owns over 50
bicycles.
He also enjoys
rugby union and is a big
fan of former
All Black,
Jonah Lomu.
Williams is a supporter of eco-friendly vehicles. He currently
drives a
Toyota Prius, but is on the
waiting list to be an early adopter of the
Aptera 2-series electric vehicle.
Charity work
Williams and his former 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. In December 1999, he sang in
French on the
BBC-inspired music video of international celebrities
doing a cover of the
Rolling Stones'
"It's Only Rock & Roll" for the charity Children's
Promise.
Williams
has performed with the USO for U.S. troops stationed
in Iraq
and Afghanistan
.
Filmography
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
Gioachino Rossini's
"
Largo al factotum" from
The Barber of
Seville.
Williams appeared in the music video of Bobby McFerrin's hit song
"
Don't Worry, Be Happy".
- 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)
- Robin Williams: Raul's House 2 (2009)
Television guest appearances
References
- Sources conflict. The print biographies The Life and Humor
of Robin Williams: A Biography and Robin Williams: A
Biography give his birth year as 1952. The Robin Williams
Scrapbook also gives a birth year as 1952, as does
Encyclopedia Britannica. Williams refers to himself as
being "55" in an interview published July 4, 2007. He also verifies
his date of birth as July 21, 1951 in a fansite interview:
Stuurman, Linda. RWF talks with Robin Williams: Proost!, May 25,
2008.
- Detroit Country Day: Frequently Asked Questions
- YouTube - Happy Days - Richie Meets Mork
- robinwilliams.com
- Robin Williams' wife files for divorce after nearly
19 years
- http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2515796
- http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre5247lm-us-williams/
- Jones, Kenneth. "Robin Williams' Spring Broadway Bow Postponed Due to
Heart Surgery",playbill.com, March 5, 2009
- Interview at Pro-HL.com
- Engadget.com
- Robin Williams plays Spore
- Dungeons and Dragons Game Day at London Dungeon,
ViewLondon.co.uk
- http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index.php/t-10161.html
- http://www.ticketsnow.com/Robin-Williams-Tickets.html
-
http://www.granvilleonline.ca/gr/features/2008/11/12/toyota-prius-hybrid-2009
-
http://www.roadandtrack.com/article.asp?section_id=10&article_id=7651
- World Entertainment News Network. "Williams rekindles failed marriage on film,"
San Francisco Chronicle, August 28, 2009. Retrieved August
29, 2009.
- Bobby McFerrin Homepage
Bibliography
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