by Dave Itzkoff
When Robin first laid eyes on Valerie Velardi, a dancer and movement instructor, he said that what he experienced was not so much love at first sight. “More like lust,” he explained. “She just looked … hot. Caliente.” Even before he and Valerie were married in 1978, she offered crucial organizational help for his comedy and boundless forgiveness for his misdeeds.
Robin with Ron Howard and Henry Winkler on Happy Days. In a whirlwind process completed just days before the taping of “My Favorite Orkan,” Robin was cast to play Mork from Ork, an intergalactic miscreant with supernatural powers and a comical misunderstanding of human customs. When ABC aired the episode on January 28, 1978, it proved hugely popular, showing that Mork—and Robin—had greater potential.
Robin and Pam Dawber as the title characters on Mork & Mindy. To the series’ co-creator Garry Marshall, the show needed a straitlaced co-star to rein in Robin’s unruliness—”a Waspy, all-around very American girl to go against this lunatic.” Behind the scenes, Dawber came to accept that the show was Robin’s platform and not hers. “I was hanging on by my fingernails at the beginning,” she said.
Directed by Robert Altman and pairing Robin with Shelley Duvall, Popeye was ultimately a tender musical comedy (with a screenplay by Jules Feiffer and songs by Harry Nilsson) about the cartoon sailorman’s search for a family. But the cluttered production and Robin’s clenched dialogue confused viewers when the movie was released in 1980, and it did not advance his leading-man ambitions.
The arrival of Robin and Valerie’s son, Zachary Pym Williams, in 1983 was a life-altering experience, providing Robin with a powerful incentive to stop his substance abuse and to reevaluate his priorities. As Robin would later write to Zak, recounting his birth, “Suddenly there was a focus, a meaning, a continuity. My newborn baby who looked like Churchill and Gandhi … you. You opened your eyes, and mine!”
Following Mork & Mindy’s cancelation in 1982, Robin was torn between the need to have commercial hits and his desire to make “strange films” that didn’t align with his audience’s expectations. “I hope I can keep doing more,” he said, even as he felt gravity tugging him back to familiar settings: “I’ll probably end up, next day you’ll see, ‘Look, it’s Mork & Mindy! He’s back and he’s crazier than ever!’”
Robin on Saturday Night Live in 1984, playing William F. Buckley Jr. in a parody of Firing Line with Eddie Murphy. Murphy’s phenomenal success, in stand-up, on SNL, and in hit movies like Trading Places, was not easily received by Robin, who saw comedy as something of a zero-sum game: for one comic to rise, another comic had to fall. Murphy, he said, “knows exactly what he does and how to get it out on film perfectly. I don’t.”
The selection of Robin, Whoopi Goldberg, and Billy Crystal as the hosts of HBO’s Comic Relief telethon in 1986 was a somewhat ad-hoc assembly. Robin and Crystal were now fast friends with an easy give-and-take in their improvised sets, while Goldberg was the wild card of the group and an outsider due to her gender and race. But the trio’s relentless riffing and the success of the first broadcast, which raised nearly $2.5 million in donations, established them as the nation’s ambassadors of improv comedy.
Robin with his half-brothers McLaurin Smith-Williams, left, and Todd Williams, center. Though Robin sometimes spoke of being raised as an only child, Todd (his father’s son from his first marriage) and McLaurin (his mother’s son from her first marriage) were constant presences in his life. Each had a strong influence on him, and the three regarded one another as full siblings.
In this sketch from a 1988 episode of Saturday Night Live, Robin plays a bitter, curmudgeonly, sixty-year-old version of himself, after his talents have dissipated and his fans have forgotten him, while Dana Carvey plays his grown son, a nightmare version of Robin who pathologically riffs on everything he sees. The fear of what would happen to him in his later years was a persistent theme in Robin’s work.
In Good Morning, Vietnam, Robin played Adrian Cronauer, the rebellious disc jockey who upends the monotonous military radio station where he has been posted. The film, directed by Barry Levinson and released in 1987, provided Robin with a perfect blend of quiet drama and ad-libbed comedy, yielding his first number-one box-office hit and his first Academy Award nomination.
Dead Poets Society, set at a regimented boarding school in 1959, recalled Robin’s own coming-of-age at a similarly conservative academy. Written by Tom Schulman and directed by Peter Weir, the 1989 film cast Robin as the inspirational and irrepressible teacher John Keating; it offered him limited opportunities for improvisation but resulted in another indelible role and a second Oscar nomination.
Awakenings, adapted from Oliver Sacks’s nonfiction book about his treatment of people in catatonic states, cast Robin as the Sacks-like character Dr. Malcolm Sayer and Robert De Niro as one of his resuscitated patients. At its release in 1990, the film, directed by Penny Marshall, was not as successful as Robin hoped it would be, but it led to a long friendship with Sacks, who regarded him as his “younger twin.”
Robin earned his third Academy Award nomination for The Fisher King, a phantasmagorical morality tale in which he played Parry, a street vagabond who strikes up an unusual friendship with a radio shock-jock played by Jeff Bridges. Bridges came to love Robin, as did the film’s director, Terry Gilliam, who saw how the role of Parry stirred something deep inside him: “He’s a comic, and all comics want to be Hamlet.”
Marsha Garces, seen here with Robin at the 1991 Golden Globe Awards, entered the Williams household as a nanny to Zak and later became an assistant to Robin. It was not until after Robin’s marriage to Valerie collapsed that he and Marsha struck up a romantic relationship, and when they married in 1989, she became an indispensable part of his career. As Robin said of her, “She’s helping me learn to say ‘No’—the most provocative word in Hollywood.”
Robin was one of just two celebrities, along with Bette Midler, to be featured on the penultimate broadcast of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on May 21, 1992. Though Robin had never been booked on The Tonight Show as a stand-up in the 1970s, his visits to Carson’s couch in the ’80s were reliably outrageous and collegial. Carson hailed Robin as among those who had transcended their field and had become “a comic persona unto themselves.”
As the singing, shape-shifting Genie in Walt Disney’s 1992 animated adaptation of Aladdin, Robin was finally provided with a character and a medium that could keep pace with his rapid-fire imagination. For once, there was no such thing as overdoing it: every silly voice and stock accent he had in his arsenal, every celebrity impression in his repertoire, was necessary for the proposition to succeed.
When an unemployed and soon-to-be-divorced father is desperate to spend time with his three children any way he can, he assumes the alter ego of a matronly Scottish housekeeper. Mrs. Doubtfire, directed by Chris Columbus and for which Marsha served as a producer, was a perfect synthesis of her and Robin’s lives as spouses, parents, and creative partners, and it became the most lucrative film of Robin’s career to that point.
Robin as Dr. Sean Maguire, the therapist who comes to care for Matt Damon, the title character in Good Will Hunting. The 1997 film’s screenplay, written by Damon and Ben Affleck, was engineered to jumpstart their acting careers, and it included the mournful Maguire as a supporting role specifically intended for a more bankable, name-brand star. (The authors imagined a rugged A-lister like Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, Ed Harris, or Morgan Freeman.)
On his fourth nomination—his first as a supporting actor—Robin won his Academy Award for his performance in Good Will Hunting. He brought Marsha and Laurie to the Oscars ceremony on March 23, 1998, and in his acceptance speech, he hoisted his trophy skyward to thank “my father, up there, the man who, when I said I wanted to be an actor, he said, wonderful, just have a backup profession like welding.”
When a 1995 horse-riding accident left his friend Christopher Reeve paralyzed, Robin never wavered in his financial or emotional support. Here, Robi
n gives Reeve a tender greeting at a May 2004 screening, watched by Reeve’s son Will and his wife, Dana. Reeve died that October and Robin was devastated. “There was a part of him that just seemed so indestructible,” Robin said.
The Williams family in a joyous moment on the red carpet at the 2006 Golden Globe Awards. From left: Alex Mallick (Zak’s girlfriend, later his wife), Zak, Cody, Robin, Marsha, and Zelda. But behind the scenes, the family was in crisis—after some twenty years of sobriety, Robin had started drinking again, to dangerous excess, and the people around him knew it. He and Marsha filed for divorce in 2008, citing irreconcilable differences.
Robin entertaining troops at Baghdad International Airport on a USO tour, one of several that he would make. As the son of a veteran—and as an actor whose most beloved roles included one particularly unruly airman—Robin said he wanted “to let them know people at home haven’t forgotten them and also, when I get back, to tell people don’t forget the people there.”
Robin in a pensive moment before a performance of Weapons of Self Destruction, the 2009 stand-up show that would be his final comedy tour. Even before the tour was halted so that Robin could undergo emergency heart surgery, it was already a candid and intensely personal set in which he talked about his relapse into alcoholism and his divorce from Marsha. “How much more can you give?” Robin wondered. “Other than, literally, open heart surgery onstage?”
Robin moved quickly in his courtship of Susan Schneider, a graphic artist and designer he met in 2007, and the two were married in 2011. Some of Robin’s friends regarded Susan, who was herself a recovering alcoholic, as a positive influence in his life, but unlike Marsha, she was more focused on her own work and was not interested in being Robin’s professional collaborator or managing him on a day-to-day basis.
It was not until 2011 that Robin made his Broadway debut as the title character in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, the playwright Rajiv Joseph’s existential comedy-drama set in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion. Robin earned strong reviews for his performance as the Tiger, who wanders the play as a sarcastic ghost, but the production’s brief run and Robin’s failure to receive a Tony Award nomination were bitter disappointments.
Robin’s death on August 11, 2014, shocked and saddened the world, and the tragic news was rapidly disseminated on the internet. Not knowing quite how to process the loss, some fans poured their hearts out in social media posts; others created makeshift memorials at locations that had featured prominently in Robin’s career, as here at the house in Boulder, Colorado, where his character lived on Mork & Mindy.
Zak Williams, right, celebrates as Zelda and Cody watch him throw out the ceremonial first pitch of Game 5 of the 2014 World Series at AT&T Park in San Francisco on October 26, 2014. As Zak said of Robin at his father’s memorial service, “He was at once so superhuman and yet so very human. But I don’t think he ever felt he was anything special.”
ROBIN WILLIAMS: SELECTED WORKS AND AWARDS
MOVIES
Can I Do It … Til I Need Glasses? (1977)
Popeye (1980)
The World According to Garp (1982)
The Survivors (1983)
Moscow on the Hudson (1984)
The Best of Times (1986)
Club Paradise (1986)
Seize the Day (1986)
Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) (credited as Ray D. Tutto)
Portrait of a White Marriage (1988) (uncredited)
Dead Poets Society (1989)
Cadillac Man (1990)
Awakenings (1990)
Shakes the Clown (1991) (credited as Marty Fromage)
Dead Again (1991)
The Fisher King (1991)
Hook (1991)
FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992) (voice)
Aladdin (1992) (voice)
Toys (1992)
Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)
Being Human (1994)
Nine Months (1995)
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995) (uncredited)
Jumanji (1995)
The Birdcage (1996)
Jack (1996)
Aladdin and the King of Thieves (1996) (voice; direct to video)
The Secret Agent (1996) (uncredited)
Hamlet (1996)
Fathers’ Day (1997)
Deconstructing Harry (1997)
Flubber (1997)
Good Will Hunting (1997)
What Dreams May Come (1998)
Patch Adams (1998)
Jakob the Liar (1999)
Bicentennial Man (1999)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) (voice)
One Hour Photo (2002)
Death to Smoochy (2002)
Insomnia (2002)
The Final Cut (2004)
House of D (2004)
Noel (2004) (uncredited)
Robots (2005) (voice)
The Big White (2005)
The Night Listener (2006)
RV (2006)
Everyone’s Hero (2006) (voice; uncredited)
Man of the Year (2006)
Happy Feet (2006) (voice)
Night at the Museum (2006)
License to Wed (2007)
August Rush (2007)
World’s Greatest Dad (2009)
Shrink (2009)
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009)
Old Dogs (2009)
Happy Feet Two (2011) (voice)
The Big Wedding (2013)
Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013)
The Face of Love (2013)
Boulevard (2014)
The Angriest Man in Brooklyn (2014)
A Merry Friggin’ Christmas (2014)
Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (2014)
Absolutely Anything (2015) (voice)
TELEVISION
The Richard Pryor Show (1977)
Laugh-In (1977)
Eight Is Enough (1977)
Sorority ’62 (1978) (pilot)
America 2-Night (1978)
Happy Days (1978–79)
Mork & Mindy (1978–82)
Out of the Blue (1979)
Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre (1982)
SCTV Network (1982)
Saturday Night Live (1984, 1986, 1988) (host)
The Larry Sanders Show (1992, 1994)
Homicide: Life on the Street (1994)
Friends (1997)
L.A. Doctors (1999)
Life with Bonnie (2003)
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2008)
SpongeBob SquarePants (2009)
Wilfred (2012)
Louie (2012)
The Crazy Ones (2013–14)
COMEDY SPECIALS
The Great American Laugh-Off (1977)
Live at the Roxy (1978)
An Evening with Robin Williams (1982)
Robin Williams: An Evening at the Met (1986)
Carol, Carl, Whoopi and Robin (1987)
Robin Williams: Live on Broadway (2002)
Robin Williams: Weapons of Self Destruction (2010)
COMIC RELIEF
1986
1987–’87
1989–III
1991–IV
1992–V
1994–VI
1995–VII
1998–VIII
2006–2006
COMEDY ALBUMS
Reality … What a Concept (1979)
Throbbing Python of Love (1982)
A Night at the Met (1986)
Robin Williams—Live 2002 (2002)
Weapons of Self Destruction (2010)
THEATER
Waiting for Godot (1988)
Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo (2011)
AWARDS AND NOMINATIONS
ACADEMY AWARDS
Best Actor (Good Morning, Vietnam) (1988)—nominated
Best Actor (Dead Poets Society) (1990)—nominated
Best Actor (The Fisher King) (1992)—nominated
/> Best Supporting Actor (Good Will Hunting) (1998)—won
BAFTA AWARDS
Best Actor in a Leading Role (Good Morning, Vietnam) (1989)—nominated
Best Actor in a Leading Role (Dead Poets Society) (1990)—nominated
DAYTIME EMMY AWARDS
Outstanding Performer in an Animated Series (Great Minds Think for Themselves) (1998)—nominated
GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS
Best Actor—Television Series Musical or Comedy (Mork & Mindy) (1979)—won
Best Actor—Television Series Musical or Comedy (Mork & Mindy) (1980)—nominated
Best Actor—Motion Picture Musical or Comedy (Moscow on the Hudson) (1985)—nominated
Best Actor—Motion Picture Musical or Comedy (Good Morning, Vietnam) (1988)—won
Best Actor—Motion Picture Drama (Dead Poets Society) (1990)—nominated
Best Actor—Motion Picture Drama (Awakenings) (1991)—nominated
Best Actor—Motion Picture Musical or Comedy (The Fisher King) (1992)—won
Special Award for Vocal Work (Aladdin) (1993)
Best Actor—Motion Picture Musical or Comedy (Mrs. Doubtfire) (1994)—won
Best Supporting Actor—Motion Picture Drama (Good Will Hunting) (1998)—nominated
Best Actor—Motion Picture Musical or Comedy (Patch Adams) (1999)—nominated