Comedian and actor Robin
Williams has lost his lifelong battle with his own inner demons. The voice of
the Genie in Disney’s “Aladdin” was found dead today in his California home of
an apparent suicide. Williams’ acting and stand up was often characterized as
manic, which may have been due to his battles with his own personality. It was
no secret that Williams battled depression for most of his life. Early in his
career this led to substance abuse, a hurdle he eventually overcame. It’s a
shame that what fueled the comedy he used to bring joy into so many lives is
probably what also took his life in the end.
I was first introduced to
Williams through the “Mork & Mindy” television show in which Williams
portrayed an alien from the planet Ork who crash landed on Earth and came to
live with a single woman named Mindy. The series was a spin-off of the popular
show “Happy Days” where Williams originated the character of Mork. Williams’
manic nature made him seem as if he really were an alien from another planet.
For a time his alien greeting “Nanu nanu” became a cultural maker.
Williams skyrocketed to fame
from the television show and gained a reputation as an outrageous stand-up
comedian with a succession of several successful stand-up films on HBO. During
the 1970s and early 80s he struggled with a cocaine habit that he made widely public
in a surprisingly humorous way in his stand-up special “Robin Williams: At the
Met” (1986). In it, he claimed the birth of his son had prompted him to clean
up.
Despite his meteoric rise to
celebrity through comedy, Williams set out in a more dramatic direction with
his film career. Tapped to play Popeye in Robert Altman’s musical comedy flop
“Popeye” (1980) based on the once popular cartoon series, Williams didn’t let
bad notices slow him down. He soon took lead roles in the adaptation of John
Irving’s “The World According to Garp” (1982), and in the surprisingly somber
look at Russian to American defection “Moscow on the Hudson” (1984). He took some
roles in some lesser comedy effortsduring that decade; but with his role as
real life war radio DJ Adrian Cronauer in the movie “Good Morning, Vietnam”
(1987), he found the perfect mixture of comedy and drama.
His performance as Cronauer
earned him his first of four Academy Award nominations for acting. He would
later be nominated for his leading roles in the movies “Dead Poets Society”
(1990) and “The Fisher King” (1992). He would finally win an Oscar for his
supporting role as a psychologist who helps an M.I.T. janitor embrace his gift
for mathematics in the movie “Good Will Hunting”. His performance as Dr.
Malcolm Sayer, a character loosely based on Dr. Oliver Sacks who developed a
treatment that temporarily relieved Parkinsons patients, in the movie
“Awakenings” (1990), was also highly lauded.
During the 90s, Williams hit
probably his biggest cinematic success with a series of family oriented movies.
“Mrs. Doubtfire” (1993) found the actor dressing up like a woman to spend more
time with his children after a bitter divorce. “Jumanji” (1995) depicted him as
a man trapped in a magical board game as a child only to find himself released
when another set of kids unearth the dangerous game. But it was his voice work
as the Genie in Disney’s follow-up to the extremely successful “Beauty and the
Beast”, “Aladdin” (1992) that solidified Williams as family box office gold.
In more recent years,
Williams’ film output has taken a plunge in terms of quality with hits like
“Happy Feet” (2006), “Night at the Museum” (2006) and “Old Dogs” (2009) seeming
harder to come by. He had found some success with more independent oriented
films, however, dropping his family image for some more sinister roles in
movies like Mark Romanek’s “One Hour Photo” (2002), Christopher Nolan’s remake
“Insomnia” (2002), Omar Naim’s “The Final Cut” (2004), Armistead Maupin’s “The
Night Listener” (2005), and Bobcat Goldthwait’s “World’s Greatest Dad” (2009).
Williams has never slowed
down. He also participated in the sequels “Night at the Museum: Battle of the
Smithsonian” (2009) and “Happy Feet Too” (2011). He returned to television in
the CBS comedy series “The Crazy Ones” for the 2013-2014 television season and
the coming year will see the release of four more projects, including a third
“Night at the Museum” installment later this year.
While certainly not the
first comedian to make the leap from comedy to drama, Williams’ continued
success as a dramatic actor has done wonders in allowing Hollywood to see
comedians as more rounded performers, capable of providing as much power
dramatically as they are capable of producing in the form of laughs
comedically. His comedic style was not always universally loved, but his
dramatic output is hard to argue against. His influence as an artist was even
greater. He contributed a great deal to charity work including hosting, with
Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg, the “Comic Relief” comedy concert series to
support the homeless. The loss of this powerful artist will be felt by the
world. Williams was 63.
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