Robin Williams at “Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” Premiere December 3, 2003 Photo © 2003 Joe Martinez – All Rights Reserved
According to CNN, Oscar winning actor and comedian Robin Williams died at his Northern California home Monday (August 11, 2014). Williams apparently took his own life, law enforcement officials said. He was 63.
“He has been battling severe depression of late,” his media representative Mara Buxbaum told CNN. “This is a tragic and sudden loss. The family respectfully asks for their privacy as they grieve during this very difficult time.”
Per a statement from the Marin County, California, Sheriff’s Office, coroner investigators suspect “the death to be a suicide due to asphyxia,”
USA Today added “Williams was found by his personal assistant, who broke in to his room Monday morning when he failed to respond to knocks. She was distraught in the 911 call and indicated Williams’ death was a suicide by hanging.”
The news of Williams’ death shocked the Hollywood community and the world. Although the 63-year-old beloved actor and comedy legend has passed, so many unforgettable film and TV roles will ensure that his memory and talent live on.
Robin Williams Trivia Per IMDB:
Moved to San Francisco, California when he was 16.
Studied acting briefly at Julliard under John Houseman. Houseman told him he was wasting his talent at Juilliard and he should strike out on his own and do stand-up comedy.
When he auditioned for the role of Mork from Ork on Happy Days (1974), producer Garry Marshall told him to sit down. Williams immediately sat on his head on the chair. Marshall hired him, saying that he was the only alien who auditioned.
During the making of Mork & Mindy (1978), Williams departed from the scripts and ad libbed so many times and so well, that the producers stop trying to make him stick to the script and deliberately left gaps in the later scripts leaving only “Mork can go off here” in those places so Robin could improvise.
2003: Won Grammy Award for Best Spoken Comedy Album for “Robin Williams – Live 2002”.
Was voted “Least Likely to Succeed” by his fellow graduates at Larkspur (highschool).
He was voted the 50th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
He was a very overweight child. As a result, nobody would play with him. He started talking in different voices to entertain himself.
Most of his dialogue in Aladdin (1992) was ad-libbed.
Co-owned the Rubicon Restaurant in San Francisco with Robert De Niro and fellow Bay area resident Francis Ford Coppola.
Was offered the role of The Riddler in Batman Forever (1995), which eventually went to Jim Carrey.
Williams and Robert De Niro were the last stars to see John Belushi alive, albeit on separate visits to Bungalow #3 of the Chateau Marmont Hotel in Los Angeles that fateful day in March 1982.
Was frequently called up by Steven Spielberg when he was filming Schindler’s List (1993). He would put him on speaker phone so he could tell jokes to the cast and crew to cheer them up. He used his character in Aladdin (1992) most of the time.
As of his death in 2014, he had appeared in three films that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: Dead Poets Society (1989), Awakenings (1990) and Good Will Hunting (1997).