By Elliott West
“Everything you have ever wanted is sitting on the other side of fear”.
Robin Williams
Introduction
Robin Williams made it his life’s mission to make people laugh. His manic brand of comedy often had no filters, a prized chat show guest who was unpredictable but whose result always left the audience having the biggest laugh. He was the golden ticket that Willy Wonka concealed in a chocolate bar. A light relief to a world that conjures up so many daily challenges. A comedian who looked like he just got out of bed and dressed in the dark. A child who had never quite grown up, the Peter Pan of his field. Yet his brilliant style was unique. It touched the core of comedy. Whether he was playing Mork or Mrs Doubtfire, his frenzied humour shone through. A natural for the camera lens but as they say the camera never lies. You could always sense that there was something not quite right and Williams was trying to mask his inner demons.
Owning the Stage
Born on July 21, 1951 in Chicago, Illinois. Robin Williams was the son of a Ford Motor Company executive and a former fashion model. As a child, he was naturally funny and loved to entertain his family and classmates making them howl with laughter. A life and career choice that took a nanosecond to decide. As a teenager, the family moved to California and Williams attended Claremont Men’s College and College of Marin before briefly moving to New York to attend Julliard School. Yet his heart was in California and it wasn’t long before he gave the comedy circuit a shot, becoming a highly popular act in the sprawling comedy clubs that existed in the 1970s. His act was loud, funny and brash, gaining the attention of US television executives. It wasn’t long before he was cast as the loveable alien in Mork and Mindy and numerous appearances in other television shows of the time.
However, Robin’s big break came in 1980 when he was offered the lead role in the film Popeye. A part that he took to like a duck to water. The spinach-chewing, pipe-smoking sailor, branded with an anchor tattoo on his rippling arm. A sailor who ruled the land and sea with his brawn and somehow squeezed a sentence out the side of his mouth. A childhood cartoon character whom Robin loved and had perfected in voice, facial expressions and stance. Now through a muscular latex costume. It was a break that would lead to a catalogue of film roles including epics like Good Morning Vietnam and Dead Poets Society.
The Personal Demons
Robin Williams’ acting career would run for decades but behind the laughter and the smile, was a troubled man. Someone who struggled with his inner demons. During the height of his success in the 1980s, he fell into the trap of drug addiction and got hooked on cocaine. It would be a habit that ruled his life for several years and it wasn’t until his good friend John Belushi. the Blues Brothers’ star died from the habit, aged only 33 in 1982 when Robin finally decided to wave goodbye to the drug. A friend with whom he had only been partying with the night before.
This and the death of his close friend Christopher Reeve in 2004, led him to drink heavily in the early 2000s. An addiction that was fuelled by depression. His public life was at an all-time high but his private life was full of ups and downs. Yet just when he seemed to be seeing the light and his darkest days were behind him, he received a shocking bolt from the blue. Called to see his doctor, Williams was given a heartbreaking diagnosis. He was told he had the onset of Parkinson’s Disease. A diagnosis that he shared with his wife Susan Schneider Williams and his three children but kept a secret from the media and his fans.
Yet all this while, Robin struggled to understand why he was still feeling anxious, paranoid and depressed. He could fathom how Parkinson’s Disease would cause this. So he decided to attend a neurocognitive testing facility to see if there was something else healthwise going on. Yet tragically he would never attend. On what seemed an ordinary night on 11 August 2014, his wife left her husband on his iPad in the living room and went to bed. Robin gave a parting comment “Goodnight, my love… goodnight, goodnight.” That was the last time she saw him alive.
Robin had gone to another bedroom and locked the door. It wasn’t until the next morning when Susan couldn’t get a response that the lock was picked. Williams was discovered in a seated position on the floor with a belt around his neck. He had hung himself, using one end of the belt around his neck and the other secured between a closet door and door frame in the bedroom. He also had a cut to his wrist. On a chair close by was his iPad, two types of antidepressants and a pocket knife with blood on it. The later coronary enquiry concluded with a suicide caused by asphyxia due to hanging. The post-mortem showed that there was nothing in his bloodstream apart from caffeine and antidepressants. Yet it also showed that Robin was misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease and we still don’t know what he had. Although it is reported that he had some form of dementia.
