Robin Williams
1951 – 2014 · United States
Known for: Comic genius with the most human heart in Hollywood
“You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it.”
Biography
Nobody's mind moved like Robin Williams'. A shy boy who discovered that voices could be armour, he turned stand-up into weather, improvised storms no writer could script and no audience could resist. Mork, the Genie, Mrs. Doubtfire: characters so alive that three generations each believe he belonged to them.
Then there was the other Robin: the Oscar-winning therapist of Good Will Hunting, quiet and devastating, who visited children's hospitals unannounced and required film productions to hire the homeless. His death in 2014 opened a global conversation about depression that hasn't stopped. "O Captain! My Captain!", the desks the world stood on that day have never quite been stepped down from.