Actors - Robin Williams

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	Actors - Robin Williams

Robin McLaurin Williams (born July 21, 1951) is a multi-award-winning American actor and comedian. As an actor he has had starring roles on television, stage, and film.

Biography

Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and Marin County, California. His father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams, of English, Welsh, and Irish Protestant descent, was a senior executive at Ford in charge of the Midwest area, and his mother Laurie was a New Orleans-born former model of French descent.

He first achieved notice for his stand-up routines in San Francisco. After studying at Claremont McKenna College (then called Claremont Men's College) with the Strut and Fret theatre group in Claremont, California, and at Juilliard Drama School (where he befriended Christopher Reeve), he was cast by Garry Marshall as the alien Mork in a guest star part in the TV series Happy Days. Mork's appearance was so popular with viewers that it led to a spin-off television series, Mork and Mindy, which ran from 1978 to 1982.

The majority of Williams' acting career has been for cinema, although he has given some memorable performances on stage as well (notably as Estragon in a production of Waiting for Godot). His first starring roles, Popeye
(1980) and The World According to Garp
(1982), were both flops, but with Good Morning, Vietnam
(1987) Williams was nominated for an Academy Award and established a screen identity. Many of his roles have been comedies tinged with pathos (e.g., The Birdcage
, Mrs. Doubtfire
). In particular, his role as the Genie in the animated film Aladdin
was instrumental in establishing the importance of star power in voice actor casting. Later, Williams once again used his voice talents in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence and in the 2005 animated feature Robots.

Williams has also starred in dramatic films. The Academy nominated him for the Best Actor award for his role as an unorthodox and inspiring English teacher in Dead Poets Society
(1989). His later dramas included Awakenings
(1990) and What Dreams May Come
(1998).

In 1997 he won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for his role as a psychologist in Good Will Hunting
. However, by the early 2000s, he was thought by some to be typecast in films such as Patch Adams
(1998) and Bicentennial Man (1999). This apparently prompted Williams to take radically unconventional roles, beginning with the dark comedy Death to Smoochy
, followed by One Hour Photo
, Insomnia
, and The Final Cut
.

He is known for his wild improv skills and impersonations. He is a talented mimic and can jump in and out of characters at an extremely fast pace. Williams states that he began doing impersonations as a child, mimicking the Southern accent of his aunt.

Williams' first marriage was to Valerie Velardi on June 4, 1978, with whom he had one child, Zachary. That marriage ended in 1988. He married for a second time on April 30, 1989, to Marsha Garces and they have two children together.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Robin Williams ]

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Actors - Robin Williams

Biography

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