page_title: Robin Williams
section_title: Dramatic roles
hierarchical_section_title: Robin Williams / Career / Film / Dramatic roles
caption_attribution_description: Afrikaans: Akteur Robin Williams en die Poolse joernalis Yola Czaderska-Hayek by die 62ste Academy Awards in 1990 Dansk: Skuespiller Robin Williams og den polske journalist Yola Czaderska-Hayek på den 62. Academy Awards i 1990 Deutsch: Schauspieler Robin Williams und die polnische Journalistin Yola Czaderska-Hayek bei den 62nd Academy Awards in 1990 English: Actor Robin Williams and a Polish journalist Yola Czaderska-Hayek at 62nd Academy Awards (1990) Polski: Aktor Robin Williams i polska dziennikarka Yola Czaderska-Hayek podczas 62. Ceremonii rozdania Oscarow w 1990 roku.
context_page_description: Robin McLaurin Williams was an American actor and comedian. He is often regarded by critics as one of the best comedians of all time. He was known for his improvisation skills, and the wide variety of memorable voices he created. He began performing stand-up comedy in San Francisco and Los Angeles during the mid-1970s, and rose to fame for playing the alien Mork in the sitcom Mork & Mindy.
  After his first starring film role in Popeye, Williams starred in several critically and commercially successful films including The World According to Garp, Moscow on the Hudson, Good Morning, Vietnam, Dead Poets Society, Awakenings, The Fisher King, Patch Adams, One Hour Photo, and World's Greatest Dad. He also starred in box office hits such as Hook, Aladdin, Mrs. Doubtfire, Jumanji, The Birdcage, Good Will Hunting, and the Night at the Museum trilogy. He was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning Best Supporting Actor for Good Will Hunting. He also received two Primetime Emmy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and five Grammy Awards.
  In August 2014, at age 63, Williams committed suicide by hanging at his home in Paradise Cay, California.
context_section_description: Many of his subsequent roles were in comedies tinged with pathos. Looking over most of his filmography, one writer was "struck by the breadth" and radical diversity of most roles Williams portrayed. In 1989, Williams played a private-school English teacher in Dead Poets Society, which included a final, emotional scene that some critics said "inspired a generation" and became a part of pop culture. Similarly, his performance as a therapist in Good Will Hunting (1997) deeply affected even some real therapists. In Awakenings (1990), Williams plays a doctor modeled after Oliver Sacks, who wrote the book on which the film is based. Sacks later said the way the actor's mind worked was a "form of genius". In 1991, he played an adult Peter Pan in the film Hook, although he had said he would have to lose 25 pounds for the role. Terry Gilliam, who co-founded Monty Python and directed Williams in two of his films, The Fisher King (1991) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), said in 1992 that Williams had the ability to "go from manic to mad to tender and vulnerable ... [Williams had] the most unique mind on the planet. There's nobody like him out there."
  Other performances Williams had in dramatic films include Moscow on the Hudson (1984), Awakenings (1990), What Dreams May Come (1998), and Bicentennial Man (1999). In Insomnia (2002), Williams portrays a writer / killer on the run from a sleep-deprived Los Angeles policeman (played by Al Pacino) in rural Alaska. Also in 2002, in the psychological thriller One Hour Photo, Williams portrays an emotionally disturbed photo development technician who becomes obsessed with a family for whom he has developed pictures for a long time. The last film of Williams' released during his lifetime was The Angriest Man in Brooklyn, a film addressing the value of life in which Williams plays Henry Altmann, a terminally ill man who reassesses his life and works to redeem himself.
  His roles in comedy and dramatic films garnered Williams several accolades, including an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Good Will Hunting; as well as two previous Academy Award nominations, for Dead Poets Society, and as a troubled homeless man in The Fisher King, respectively.
  Among the actors who helped him during his acting career, he credited Robert De Niro, from whom he learned the power of silence and economy of dialogue when acting. From Dustin Hoffman, with whom he co-starred in Hook, he learned to take on totally different character types, and to transform his characters by extreme preparation. Mike Medavoy, producer of Hook, told its director, Steven Spielberg, that he intentionally teamed up Hoffman and Williams for the film because he knew they wanted to work together, and that Williams welcomed the opportunity of working with Spielberg. Williams benefited from working with Woody Allen, who directed him and Billy Crystal in Deconstructing Harry (1997), as Allen had knowledge of the fact that Crystal and Williams had often performed together on stage.
caption: Williams and Yola Czaderska-Hayek at the 62nd Academy Awards in 1990
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