Robin Williams was found dead at his home in Tiburon, California on Monday at the age of 63. The versatile actor began his career on television, but it was in the movies where Williams flourished. He scored four Oscar nominations in his life, including three Best Actor nods. He won Best Supporting Actor for 1997's "Good Will Hunting."
Despite all those plaudits, Williams' career on the big screen had an inauspicious start: He played the title character in 1980's "Popeye," a notorious critical failure for director Robert Altman.
"He's such a great, crusty character and an orphan, and sort of the whole idea of finding his Pappy -- and all that stuff he mumbles is pretty nasty," Williams said in a 2013 interview. "Going back they wanted me to re-loop it, but it wasn’t meant to be understood, it was meant to be, like, 'Oh, I seen better looks in oatmeal,' you know, this kind of wild stuff. But it was, you know -- it's a great character. He's tough."
Williams continued to star in a mix of quirky movies and broad comedies throughout the 1980s -- "The World According to Garp" and "Club Paradise" among them -- but it was 1987's "Good Morning, Vietnam" that launched Williams onto another level. Williams scored his first Oscar nomination for the film and won a lead actor award at the Golden Globes in the Musical and/or Comedy category.
Two years later, Williams received another Oscar nomination for "Dead Poets Society." By the time 1990 rolled around, he was one of Hollywood's biggest stars, a fact born out by Williams' resume of diverse box-office hits and critical favorites throughout the decade: "Awakenings," "The Fisher King" (another Oscar nominated performance), "Hook," a voice-acting role in "Aladdin," "Mrs. Doubtfire," "Jumanji," "The Birdcage" and "Good Will Hunting." He even turned the critically panned "Patch Adams" into a hit.
In the 2000s, Williams shifted again. He starred in dark thrillers such as "Insomnia," "One Hour Photo" and "Death to Smoochy." The latter part of the decade brought another animated hit ("Happy Feet") and his first franchise part in "Night at the Museum." Williams will appear again as Teddy Roosevelt in "Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb," the series' third installment, in December.
Speaking of presidents, last year, Williams starred as Dwight D. Eisenhower in "Lee Daniels' The Butler."
"People have forgotten what it was like almost 50 years ago," Williams said in an interview on the set of Daniels' film. "You realize how intense it was, and how violent it was. These changes, which now having a black president, that's the whole purpose of the script: Do you remember what it was like?"
Williams last listed credit on IMDb is as the voice of Dennis the Dog in "Absolutely Anything." That film is currently scheduled for release in 2015. In addition to "Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb" and "Absolutely Anything," two other Williams films were completed before his death: "Boulevard," which debuted at this year's Tribeca Film Festival and does not have distribution just yet, and "Merry Friggin' Christmas," which is due out this year.
Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
