He could make a room laugh in five seconds and break its heart in the next five. Robin Williams was a comedian, a dramatic actor and a force of nature — often all in the same scene.
Robin Williams was born in Chicago on 21 July 1951 and grew up in Michigan and California. He studied theatre, including at the Juilliard School in New York, and began his career as a stand-up comedian, building a reputation for astonishing improvisation: voices, characters and ideas tumbling out faster than an audience could follow.
Television made him a star. As the alien Mork in Mork and Mindy, which began in 1978, he played an outsider learning about Earth, and audiences fell in love with his energy and tenderness. Film followed, and he refused to stay in one box. In The World According to Garp in 1982 and Good Morning, Vietnam in 1987 he showed he could be both comic and serious, and in Dead Poets Society in 1989, as teacher John Keating, he gave a performance that became part of the culture itself.
The 1990s were his golden run: Awakenings in 1990, The Fisher King in 1991, Aladdin in 1992 as the voice of the Genie, Mrs. Doubtfire in 1993 and Jumanji in 1995. He could play a father in drag, a homeless dreamer, a cartoon genie and a psychiatrist in Good Will Hunting in 1997, and make each one feel lived-in. His comedy was never just jokes; it was empathy, delivered at full speed.
Williams died on 11 August 2014. He left behind a body of work that moves, sometimes within a single performance, from hilarity to heartbreak. That is why he is still quoted, still imitated and still missed: he made laughter feel like a form of kindness, and sadness feel like something we could share.