ROBIN WILLIAMS, SUFFERING BEHIND A LOVING SMILE

Robin Williams

Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. She has decided to watch some films interpreted by one of her favourite actors, Robin Williams. She remembers him, especially, in his roles in Good Morning Vietnam, Dead Poets Society or Jumanji.

Robin Williams was an excellent actor and comedian whose life was much more difficult that his fans thought. He died on a day like today in 2014 and The Grandma wants to pay homage to him talking about his life and his career.

Robin McLaurin Williams (July 21, 1951-August 11, 2014) was an American actor and comedian.

He is often regarded by critics as one of the best comedians of all time. He was known for his improvisation skills, and the wide variety of memorable voices he created. He began performing stand-up comedy in San Francisco and Los Angeles during the mid-1970s, and rose to fame for playing the alien Mork in the sitcom Mork & Mindy (1978–1982).

After his first starring film role in Popeye (1980), Williams starred in several critically and commercially successful films including The World According to Garp (1982), Moscow on the Hudson (1984), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Dead Poets Society (1989), Awakenings (1990), The Fisher King (1991), Patch Adams (1998), One Hour Photo (2002), and World's Greatest Dad (2009).

He also starred in box office hits such as Hook (1991), Aladdin (1992), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Jumanji (1995), The Birdcage (1996), Good Will Hunting (1997), and the Night at the Museum trilogy (2006-2014).

He was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning Best Supporting Actor for Good Will Hunting. He also received two Primetime Emmy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and five Grammy Awards.

In August 2014, at age 63, Williams committed suicide by hanging at his home in Paradise Cay, California. His widow, Susan Schneider Williams -as well as medical experts and the autopsy- attributed his suicide to his struggle with Lewy body disease.

More information: Robin Williams Fansite

Robin McLaurin Williams was born at St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, on July 21, 1951. His father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams, was a senior executive in Ford's Lincoln-Mercury Division. His mother, Laurie McLaurin, was a former model from Jackson, Mississippi, whose great-grandfather was Mississippi senator and governor Anselm J. McLaurin.

Williams had two elder half-brothers: paternal half-brother Robert, also known as Todd, and maternal half-brother McLaurin. He had English, French, German, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh ancestry.

While his mother was a practitioner of Christian Science, Williams was raised in his father's Episcopal faith. During a television interview on Inside the Actors Studio in 2001, Williams credited his mother as an important early influence on his humor, and he tried to make her laugh to gain attention.

Robin Williams roles

Williams began performing stand-up comedy in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1976. He gave his first performance at the Holy City Zoo, a comedy club in San Francisco, where he worked his way up from tending bar.

In the 1960s, San Francisco was a center for a rock music renaissance, hippies, drugs, and a sexual revolution, and in the late 1970s, Williams helped lead its comedy renaissance, writes critic Gerald Nachman.

Williams says he found out about drugs and happiness during that period, adding that he saw the best brains of my time turned to mud.

The first film role credited to Robin Williams is a small part in the 1977 low-budget comedy Can I Do It...'Til I Need Glasses?.

His first starring performance, however, is as the title character in Popeye (1980), in which Williams showcased the acting skills previously demonstrated in his television work; accordingly, the film's commercial disappointment was not blamed on his performance. 

He went on to star as the leading character in The World According to Garp (1982), which Williams considered may have lacked a certain madness onscreen, but it had a great core. He continued with other smaller roles in less successful films, such as The Survivors (1983) and Club Paradise (1986), though he said these roles did not help advance his film career.

More information: Rolling Stone

His first major break came from his starring role in director Barry Levinson's Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), which earned Williams a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. The film is set in 1965 during the Vietnam War, with Williams playing the role of Adrian Cronauer, a radio shock jock who keeps the troops entertained with comedy and sarcasm.

Williams was allowed to play the role without a script, improvising most of his lines. Over the microphone, he created voice impressions of people, including Walter Cronkite, Gomer Pyle, Elvis Presley, Mr. Ed, and Richard Nixon. We just let the cameras roll, said producer Mark Johnson, and Williams managed to create something new for every single take.

Many of his subsequent roles were in comedies tinged with pathos. Looking over most of his filmography, one writer was struck by the breadth and radical diversity of most roles Williams portrayed.

Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, 1989

In 1989, Williams 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. 

Similarly, his performance as a therapist in Good Will Hunting (1997) deeply affected even some real therapists.

In Awakenings (1990), Williams plays a doctor modeled after Oliver Sacks, who wrote the book on which the film is based. Sacks later said the way the actor's mind worked was a form of genius.

In 1991, he played an adult Peter Pan in the film Hook, although he had said he would have to lose 25 pounds for the role. Terry Gilliam, who co-founded Monty Python and directed Williams in two of his films, The Fisher King (1991) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), said in 1992 that Williams had the ability to go from manic to mad to tender and vulnerable... Williams had the most unique mind on the planet. There's nobody like him out there.

Other performances Williams had in dramatic films include Moscow on the Hudson (1984), Awakenings (1990), What Dreams May Come (1998), and Bicentennial Man (1999). In Insomnia (2002), Williams portrays a writer/killer on the run from a sleep-deprived Los Angeles policeman, played by Al Pacino, in rural Alaska.

More information: Vanity Fair

Also in 2002, in the psychological thriller One Hour Photo, Williams portrays an emotionally disturbed photo development technician who becomes obsessed with a family for whom he has developed pictures for a long time. The last film of Williams' released during his lifetime was The Angriest Man in Brooklyn, a film addressing the value of life in which Williams plays Henry Altmann, a terminally ill man who reassesses his life and works to redeem himself.

His roles in comedy and dramatic films garnered Williams several accolades, including an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Good Will Hunting; as well as two previous Academy Award nominations, for Dead Poets Society, and as a troubled homeless man in The Fisher King, respectively.

On August 11, 2014, at his home in Paradise Cay, California, Williams committed suicide by hanging. His body was cremated at Monte's Chapel of the Hills in San Anselmo, and his ashes were scattered over San Francisco Bay the next day.

More information: South China Morning Post

No matter what people tell you,

words and ideas can change the world.

Robin Williams