Robin Williams found dead
Los Angeles – The history of comedy is peppered with real-life tragedy and yesterday another life that brought laughter to millions ended far too soon.
The body of Robin Williams, the Oscar-winning actor, was found yesterday morning in his home in Marin County, north of San Francisco, where he had lived since the 1970s. He was pronounced dead minutes later. It is suspected that he committed suicide by asphyxiation, police said.
His family said that he had been battling severe depression. He was 63.
Comedian Steve Martin said on Twitter: ‘‘I could not be more stunned by the loss of Robin Williams, mensch, great talent, acting partner, genuine soul.’’
President Barack Obama said Williams was ‘‘one of a kind’’ who ‘‘ended up touching every element of the human spirit’’.
Williams will be remembered both for his comedy and for the transition he made to serious roles, such as John Keating, the inspirational English teacher he played in Dead Poets Society in 1989 – one of four parts that earned him nominations for Academy Awards.
He won an Oscar in 1998 for Good Will Hunting, playing a therapist who assists a troubled maths prodigy.
Over the years Williams made no secret of his own demons. He struggled with alcoholism and drug abuse in the 1970s and early 1980s. After he began to drink again in 2006, he sought professional help.
He had entered a rehab centre at the end of June, but had played down the seriousness of the visit and had been working on several film projects.
Drink and drugs had long informed his stand-up act. ‘‘Cocaine is God’s way of telling you that you are making too much money,’’ he once famously quipped.
However, he seldom romanticised his addictions.
He had been with the actor John Belushi on the day he overdosed, in 1982, and Williams would often say that the death of his friend had been a wake-up call.
He became a household name playing an amiable alien in the hit television show Mork and Mindy in the late 1970s, a sitcom that showcased the frenzied energy that made him one of America’s most celebrated stand-up comics.
On stage, the short, barrelchested Williams ranted and shouted as if just sprung from solitary confinement. Loud and manic, he parodied everyone from John Wayne to Keith Richards, impersonating a Russian immigrant as easily as a pack of Nazi attack dogs. He ad-libbed in many of his films and was just as quick in person. During a publicity tour for the film 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.’’
He would use the same aptitude with voices and faces in hit films such as Mrs Doubtfire, in which he appeared in drag as a Scottish nanny.
Williams was born in Chicago. His father was a Ford executive, his mother a model. He spent his earliest years in a 40-room mansion just outside Detroit – a building so big he had a floor to himself, and he later said that his childhood had been lonely.
As a boy, he took to making model soldiers – thousands of them. ‘‘There was no abuse or anything, but sometimes one had an isolated feeling. It wasn’t exactly fun,’’ he once told an interviewer.
His stand-up was lauded as sublime, and he worked the stage during a period when comics were venerated like rock stars.
In 1987, with the release of Good Morning, Vietnam, in which he played a manic, empathetic army radio-show host, Williams established himself as an A-list star. The film would earn him an Oscar nomination.
He was married three times, most recently to the graphic designer Susan Schneider, in 2011. She said: ‘‘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.’’