The 63 year old comedian and actor killed himself after years of battling depression and addiction.
From Fox News.
Oscar-winning actor and comedian Robin Williams, who dazzled in such wide-ranging dramatic and comedic roles as alien, nanny, therapist and cartoon genie during a four-decades long career, was found dead in his northern California home in a suspected suicide Monday. He was 63.
The Marin County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement that Williams was found unconscious and not breathing in his home around noon. The statement said the investigation into Williams’ death is ongoing, but the coroner “suspects the death to be a suicide due to asphyxia.”
The Marin County coroner’s office said Williams was last seen alive at home at about 10 p.m. Sunday. An emergency call from his house in Tiburon was placed to the Sheriff’s Department shortly before noon Monday.
A representative for Williams said in a statement the actor had been battling “severe depression of late.”
“This is a tragic and sudden loss,” Mara Buxbaum said. “The family respectfully asks for their privacy as they grieve during this very difficult time.”
Williams’ wife Susan Schneider said in a statement she is devastated and asked for privacy.
“This morning, I lost my husband and my best friend, while the world lost one of its most beloved artists and beautiful human beings,” she said. “I am utterly heartbroken. On behalf of Robin’s family, we are asking for privacy during our time of profound grief. As he is remembered, it is our hope the focus will not be on Robin’s death, but on the countless moments of joy and laughter he gave to millions.”
Williams publicly struggled with addiction during his career and most recently went to rehab in June to “fine tune” his sobriety, his rep said at the time.
……From his breakthrough in the late 1970s as the alien in the hit TV show “Mork and Mindy,” through his standup act and such films as “Good Morning, Vietnam,” the short, barrel-chested Williams ranted and shouted as if just sprung from solitary confinement. Loud, fast, manic, he parodied everyone from John Wayne to Keith Richards, impersonating a Russian immigrant as easily as a pack of Nazi attack dogs.
He was a riot in drag in “Mrs. Doubtfire,” or as a cartoon genie in “Aladdin.” He won his Academy Award in a rare, but equally intense dramatic role, as a teacher in the 1997 film “Good Will Hunting.”
He also played for tears in “Awakenings,” “Dead Poets Society” and “What Dreams May Come,” something that led New York Times critic Stephen Holden to once say he dreaded seeing the actor’s “Humpty Dumpty grin and crinkly moist eyes.”
Williams also won three Golden Globes, for “Good Morning, Vietnam,” “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “The Fisher King.”
……In addition to his wife, Williams is survived by his three children: daughter Zelda, 25; and sons Zachary, 31, and Cody, 22. Zelda took to Twitter late Monday to pay tribute to her father by posting a quote from Antoine De Saint-Exupery’s “The Little Prince.”
“I love you,” she wrote. “I miss you. I’ll try to keep looking up.”
Williams also toured frequently with the USO, spreading some laughter in places where danger was a daily occurrence.
“In the military in the last 15 years? Then you’ve probably got a Robin Williams story,” one former service member tweeted. Another wrote “thanks for making us laugh when we needed it the most.” Another observed that he was a “beloved figure” on base while one veteran tweeted: “Nobody had our back more than the great Robin Williams. A generation of troops will forever be grateful.”
Williams, 63, was said to be in a deep depression in the past weeks, something many veterans can relate to.
“Many veterans are expressing their grief, because depression does not discriminate. It effects the best of us as much as it craves attention from the worst in us. Robin put himself out there so much, especially for troops in combat,” Lt. Col. Arnold V. Strong, an Army Reserve officer and veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, told FOX411. “I saw him myself in Kuwait in December 2004. So many of us saw him as a heart of gold, despite his demons.”
Strong also noted that many in the military community are hurting to hear of Williams’s death because “we too have our own ghosts and inner hurts” and depression powerfully resonates.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-XYphrgRzU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7GShKKzO4M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQX_D0UJgAs
Ironically, the night before the news of his death, I happened to watch What Dreams May Come, in which he played a tragic character haunted by the deaths of his two children, and the subsequent suicide of his wife after he himself was killed in a horrific traffic accident. His character ends up in heaven but he goes to a specific place in hell reserved for those who take their lives, to rescue his wife. Suicides are sent there to reconcile their lives with the reasons they killed themselves. It’s an emotionally complicated film.
I think Robin finally found peace in a place put aside for those with irreconcilable demons.
RIP, Robin.
From a comment on the internet:
Pingback: Robin Williams Military Tribute Video |