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Robin Williams is a Actor, Producer and In Memory Of American born on 21 july 1951 at Chicago (USA)

Robin Williams

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Birth name Robin McLaurin Williams
Nationality USA
Birth 21 july 1951 at Chicago (USA)
Death 11 august 2014 (at 63 years) at Tiburon (USA)
Awards Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, Emmy Award, Golden Globe Award

Robin McLaurin Williams (July 21, 1951 – August 11, 2014) was an American actor and comedian. Starting as a stand-up comedian in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, he is credited with leading San Francisco's comedy renaissance. After rising to fame as Mork in the sitcom Mork & Mindy (1978–82), he went on to establish a career in both stand-up comedy and feature film acting. He was known for his improvisational skills.

After his film debut in the musical comedy Popeye (1980), he starred or co-starred in widely acclaimed films, including the comedy-drama The World According to Garp (1982), war comedy Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), dramas Dead Poets Society (1989) and Awakenings (1990), comedy-drama The Fisher King (1991), the animated musical-fantasy Aladdin (1992), drama Good Will Hunting (1997), and psychological thriller One Hour Photo (2002), as well as financial successes such as the fantasy adventure film Hook (1991), comedy Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), fantasy adventure Jumanji (1995), comedy The Birdcage (1996), and fantasy adventure-comedy Night at the Museum (2006).

In 1998, Williams won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Dr. Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting. He also received two Primetime Emmy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and four Grammy Awards throughout his career, and was inducted as a Disney Legend in 2009.

Biography

Marriages and children

Williams married his first wife Valerie Velardi in June 1978, following a live-in relationship with comedian Elayne Boosler. Velardi and Williams met in 1976 while he was working as a bartender at a tavern in San Francisco. Their son Zachary Pym "Zak" Williams was born in 1983. Williams and Velardi divorced in 1988.

On April 30, 1989, he married Marsha Garces, Zachary's nanny, who was pregnant with his child. They had two children, Zelda Rae Williams (born 1989) and Cody Alan Williams (born 1991). In March 2008, Garces filed for divorce from Williams, citing irreconcilable differences. Their divorce was finalized in 2010. Williams married his third wife, graphic designer Susan Schneider, on October 22, 2011, in St. Helena, California.

Williams stated, "My children give me a great sense of wonder. Just to see them develop into these extraordinary human beings."

Other interests

Williams was a member of the Episcopal Church. He described his denomination in a comedy routine as "Catholic Lite—same rituals, half the guilt." He has also described himself as an "honorary Jew," and on Israel's 60th Independence Day in 2008, he appeared in Times Square, along with several other celebrities to wish Israel a happy birthday.

Williams became a devoted cycling enthusiast, having taken up the sport partly as a substitute for drugs. Eventually, he accumulated a large bicycle collection of his own and became a fan of professional road cycling, often traveling to racing events, such as the Tour de France.

Philanthropy
In 1986, Williams teamed up with Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal to found Comic Relief USA, an annual HBO television benefit devoted to the homeless, which has raised US$80 million, as of 2014. Bob Zmuda, creator of Comic Relief, explains that Williams felt blessed because he came from a wealthy home, but wanted to do something to help those less fortunate. Williams made benefit appearances to support literacy and women's rights, along with appearing at benefits for veterans. He was a regular on the USO circuit, where he traveled to 13 countries and performed to approximately 100,000 troops. After his death, the USO thanked him "for all he did for the men and women of our armed forces."

Williams and his second wife Marsha founded the Windfall Foundation, a philanthropic organization to raise money for many charities. In December 1999, he sang in French on the BBC-inspired music video of international celebrities doing a cover of The Rolling Stones' "It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It)" for the charity Children's Promise.

In response to the 2010 Canterbury earthquake, he donated all proceeds of his "Weapons of Self Destruction" Christchurch performance to help rebuild the New Zealand city. Half the proceeds were donated to the Red Cross and half to the mayoral building fund. Williams performed with the USO for U.S. troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For several years, Williams supported St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Addiction and health problems
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Williams had an addiction to cocaine. He was a casual friend of John Belushi, and the sudden death of Belushi, with the birth of his son Zak, prompted him to quit drugs and alcohol: "Was it a wake-up call? Oh yeah, on a huge level. The grand jury helped, too." Williams turned to exercise and cycling to help alleviate his depression shortly after Belushi's death. According to bicycle shop owner Tony Tom, Williams stated, "cycling saved my life."

In 2003, he started drinking alcohol again while working on the film The Big White in Alaska. In 2006, he checked himself in to a substance-abuse rehabilitation center in Newberg, Oregon, saying he was an alcoholic.

Years afterward, Williams acknowledged his failure to maintain sobriety, but said he never returned to using cocaine, declaring in a 2010 interview "No. Cocaine – paranoid and impotent, what fun. There was no bit of me thinking, 'ooh, let's go back to that.' Useless conversations until midnight, waking up at dawn feeling like a vampire on a day pass. No."

In March 2009, he was hospitalized due to heart problems. He postponed his one-man tour for surgery to replace his aortic valve. The surgery was completed on March 13, 2009, at the Cleveland Clinic.

In mid-2014, Williams admitted himself into the Hazelden Foundation Addiction Treatment Center in Lindstrom, Minnesota for treatment related to his alcoholism.

His publicist Mara Buxbaum commented that he was suffering from severe depression prior to his death. Williams' wife Susan stated that in the period before his death, he had been sober, but was diagnosed with early stage Parkinson's disease, which was something he was "not yet ready to share publicly."