The Originals: Robin Williams

There's a good chance that you'll never find anyone that hasn't heard of Robin Williams in one way or another. Middle-aged adults know him from his stand-up albums from the 70's and 80's, as well as playing a certain alien for four years on TV. Younger adults know him from his voice work in animated films, especially a big blue magical type. Kids heard him in "Robots" and "Happy Feet" just in the last few years. Here, truly, is an Original for all ages.

Right from the start, Robin McLaurim Williams, like his manic stand-up of his adult years, was all over the place. He was born on July 21, 1951 in Chicago, but wouldn't stay there long. His father, Robert, was a highly-placed executive with the Ford Motor Company, in charge of the midwest U.S., so the family moved around quite a bit. Robin wouldn't really get to know his father until he was 16 years old, when the man took early retirement from Ford and the family moved to Marin County, California, just outside San Francisco.

This situation helped Robin develop both a good and bad trait for his future: he learned comedy to reach out to his mother, Laurie, also a hard-working and often-absent parent, hoping to make her laugh.
He also developed attachment issues and something he himself described as "Love Me Syndrome," a constant need for acceptance, that would lead to self-destructive habits later on.

Growing up "short, shy, chubby and lonely" (his words again) was hard for Robin, but he found the antidote to bring him out of his shell, the drama club at his high school. The acting bug bit him, and he took it to local colleges and got so good, he got the attention of the world-famous Julliard School in New York, earning a very-hard-to-get full scholarship. Only one other person was accepted by John Houseman for the 1973 class. This person would become very important to Robin personally and to the world at large, and would play a slightly more popular alien than Robin did a few years later.

His name was Christopher Reeve.

Many classes the two took at Julliard, they were the only ones in them, and the friends made a pact that whomever made it big first would help the other. The help wasn't necessary until Reeve's paralyzing accident, when Robin promised to pay any bills insurance didn't cover, and, maybe more importantly, made him smile for the first time after the accident when he put on his famous Russian accent and posed as his proctologist.

Houseman saw something in the young Robin and gave him some advice: Follow your comedy instead of acting, that's where your future lies. Taking his advice, he left Julliard and hit the hot West Coast comedy club scene, gaining some notice with his manic style and improvisational skills. He first appeared on television as a member of the cast of the short-lived "The Richard Pryor Show" in 1977, then made a very savvy career move...by sitting on his head.

Garry Marshall, the creator of "Happy Days," was looking for an alien to abduct the Fonz. Robin auditioned for the part. When Marshall asked him to sit down, he sat on his head in the chair. Needless to say, he got the part, Marshall saying, "Well, he was the only alien who applied." This character became Mork from Ork, and off to the stars went Robin's career. From 1978 to 1982, he would save writers a lot of space in their scripts with his improvising of verbal and physical comedy on the show. They'd just write "Mork can go off here." Mork went way off.

Unfortunately, some of the fuel of these manic performances came in powder form. Cocaine became a major addiction of Robin's during this time, and it took two earth-shaking events to get him on the road to kicking it, one was the birth of his son Zak, the other was the 1982 death of John Belushi, who Robin had just got wasted with the day before his untimely death. "Was it a wake up call?," he would say on "Inside the Actors Studio" years later, "oh yeah, on a huge level. The grand jury helped, too."

Luckily for the world, he answered the call. He won a Grammy for 1986's "Live At The Met," co-hosted the first Comic Relief show that same year, then took on the role of Adrian Cronauer in 1987's "Good Morning Vietnam," earning him the first of four Academy Award nominations (two others came for 1989's "Dead Poets Society" and 1991's "The Fisher King"), and this was just the beginning.

He appeared in blockbuster Hollywood record-makers ("Hook," "Mrs. Doubtfire," "The Birdcage"), in dramatic lesser known films (the excellent "Seize the Day," "Being Human") as crazed killers ("One Hour Photo," "Death to Smoochy," "Insomnia") and many other roles, big, small, comedic, dramatic, he did it all. And he finally got that well-deserved Oscar as Dr. Sean Maguire in 1997's "Good Will Hunting."

Oh, yeah, and he was the Genie in "Aladdin", too. Like they say, no role too small.

And he still found time to do stand-up to a sold-out Radio City Music Hall, raise money for countless charities, and sing some songs in French. No rest for the funny.

The acclaim comes from all sides. Critics and movie-goers alike praise his performances. Comics idolize him now like he did Jonathan Winters and Richard Pryor. And even an actor the caliber of Al Pacino says his hero is Robin Williams. That's a career anyone could rightly be proud of and rest on forever, but at 57, he's still working hard and may have many, many more highlights to add.