The Tragedy of Comedy: Looking Back into Robin Williams’ Final Days
However old you are, you can never be too old for a Robin Williams film.
From animated films like Robots, Happy Feet, Bicentennial Man, Toy Story and Alladin, to comedy gems such as Jumanji, Mrs. Doubtfire, Night at the Museum, and Patch Adams, and to classic films namely Good Will Hunting and Dead Poets Society, there’s no stopping the actor’s legacy in reaching his audience for years to come.
Devastatingly, the curtains had to be drawn earlier for Williams as he lost his battle to the deadly combination of three most difficult enemies to fight against – drugs, alcohol and mental illness.
A star on the rise
Robin McLaurin Williams — or simply “Robin Williams” — was born on July 21, 1951, in Chicago, Illinois. Born to former model and Christian Science practitioner mother and Ford senior executive father, Williams grew up to live in an unavailable, ever-busy household, with only the family maid left to raise him. The constant absence of his parents became the early influence of his humour, shaping the presence of the soon-to-be comedy icon as we know him today.
Even then, the young Williams already had a flair for comedy, mainly driven to get his mother, Laurie McLaurin, to laugh and give him attention. Williams used to be a “shy and quiet kid” in his earlier years until he joined his high school drama club, overcoming the jitters through the special kind of humour he developed for a special kind of situation as he shared in a 2006 radio interview on Fresh Air.
Given the nature of his parents’ career, Williams was often few moving in and out several states. He has transferred schools and transferred cities yet his funny, energetic charisma has stuck with him anywhere he goes — even voted as “Most Likely Not to Succeed” and “Funniest” by his classmates during their high school graduation.
As a natural-born laughter machine, it was no surprise that Williams eventually got into the prestigious Juilliard School with full scholarship. It was also at the same school where he became friends with the future Superman star, Christopher Reeve who also turned out to be his roommate.
After spending some time in college, he decided to try his luck in the comedy industry in San Francisco and Los Angeles, where he gradually developed a successful stand-up career and had a flourishing run.
It was not long until he started appearing on-screen in several 70’s TV shows namely The Richard Pryor Show (1977), Laugh-In (1977) and Eight Is Enough (1977) all within the same year. These programs eventually catapulted him to fame, making his brand as the Alien Mork known to the American audience.
Taking advantage of the popularity that his character was getting, he debuted Mork on the series entitled Happy Days and eventually starred in his own show called Mork & Mindy.
From there, William’s Hollywood career has gone far and wide, acting in a string of both commercially and critically-acclaimed films. Following his fortune, it seemed like he already had everything in the bag: the success, the wealth, and the fame.
But, by the time that he established his career, the Oscar-winning actor and comedian began having problems in his personal life — very serious ones, at that.
Drugs, Drinking, Depression: A Deadly Trio
Just like success, the price of fame also had an early onset on Williams’ career.
While working on his TV program, the actor was introduced to drugs and alcohol. This was the beginning of a downward spiral for Williams. Although his acting career would continue to progress for years on end, the comedian will go on to have a very tricky fight with not only his addiction, but also his mental health.
Williams, unknown to the public, had an on-and-off battle with addiction throughout. He once struggled with cocaine and booze during his run on Mork & Mindy, but was quick to stop thanks to the birth of his first child, Zak, from his then-wife Valerie Velardi.
The birth of his first-born was not the only factor that forced him to stay sober — the death of his friend, John Belushi, was, too.
Spending time with Belushi in the final hours before his speedball overdose, Robin was devastated by the incident, saying in a 1988 interview with People that Belushi’s death “scared a whole group of show-business people”, causing the industry a “big exodus” from drugs.
He continued to stay clean for 20 years, convinced that “he couldn’t be a father and live that sort of life.”
However, his two decades of sobriety was short-lived as in 2006, the actor-comedian fell into a relapse.
The beginning of the end of an era
From then on, Williams had a long battle with sobriety and relapse, jumping from struggling to recovering to struggling again.
Now that quitting cold turkey was proven ineffective, Williams himself had voluntarily checked into a number of institutions including Oregon’s Hazelden Springbrook Treatment Center in August 2006 and Hazelden’s Dan Anderson Renewal Center in 2013, eager to stop himself from falling off the wagon for good.
Unfortunately, his misdiagnosis for Parkinson’s Disease in place of Lewy Body Dementia most certainly did not do his recovery journey good — and even put an abrupt end to it, once and for all.
Robin Williams shocked the world for the last and final time but this time, not with his performance but because of his untimely demise, leaving his wife, three children, and millions of fans mourning.
In August 2014, at the age of 63, the film icon took his own life at his home in Paradise Cay, California, taking his last and final bow as the Robin Williams everybody loves to this day.
RIP
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