Robin McLaurim Williams (born July 21,
1951 or 1952)[2] is an Academy Award-, Golden Globe-, and
Grammy Award-winning American comedian and actor.
Biography
Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois. His mother, Laura McLaurim (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, 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. He has one half-brother, McLaurin, as well a deceased
half-brother, Todd, who died August 14, 2007.
Williams has described himself as a quiet 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 was one of only 20 students accepted into the freshman
class at Juilliard. Williams, along with
Christopher Reeve, were the only students accepted by John Houseman
into the Advanced Program at the school that year. Reeve and Williams had several classes together in which
they were the only two students. In their dialects class, Williams had no
trouble mastering all dialects quickly, whereas Reeve was more meticulous
about it. Williams and Reeve developed a close friendship, and they
remained good friends for the rest of Reeve's life. Williams visited Reeve
after the horseback riding accident that paralyzed him from the neck down
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.
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 TV
series Mork and Mindy A show whose setting was in Boulder Colorado. He was
also a guest star in the hit show "Happy Days"
Mork on Happy Days
Mork meets Fonzie
Mork, Laverne, and the Fonz
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. Mork
was 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.
Cinema
career
The majority 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.
His role as the Genie in the animated film Aladdin was instrumental in
establishing the importance of star power in voice actor casting. Later,
Williams once again 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.
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 and
conversely to all previous animation features, the animation had to be
post-produced to synch with Williams' pre-recorded voice-over.
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. Williams had earlier been a
prime candidate 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 taken by Heath Ledger.
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.
