Tribute To Actor Robin McLaurin Williams aka Robin Williams (Portrait)

Tribute to actor Robin McLaurin Williams aka Robin Williams (* July 21, 1951 in Chicago, Illinois; † August 11, 2014 in Paradise Cay, California) was a US actor and comedian. He became known in 1978 for the sitcom Mork of the Orc. The Oscar and five-time Golden Globe winner played both tragicomic (Good Morning, Vietnam, The Dead Poets Society) and psychopathic roles (One Hour Photo, Insomnia - Sleepless), but also appeared in family films (Flubber, Jumanji, Mrs. Doubtfire - The Prickly Nanny, The Chaos Campers).

Tribute to actor Robin McLaurin Williams aka Robin Williams grew up in affluent circumstances in Chicago and Bloomfield Hills near Detroit. His mother, Laura McLaurin, was the founder of a modeling agency and his father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams, was a Ford executive. While in high school, he lived in Los Angeles and in Tiburon, a suburb of San Francisco.

After high school, he began studying political science in college, but dropped out. He now switched to theater classes, which he also did not finish. He took an improv seminar and performed as a stand-up comedian in the group The Comedy of San Francisco. When America's leading acting school Juilliard's held an audition in San Francisco, he attended and was accepted.

At 21, he moved to New York City and became friends at Juilliard with classmate Christopher Reeve. The two were the only two of their class to be accepted into John Houseman's advanced class. After three years, he went back to San Francisco and in 1975 performed again as a stand-up comedian at The Comedy Store, where he met early companions such as Richard Pryor and Paul Mooney.