The name Robin Williams is rightly synonymous with comedy. Over the course of his colorful career Williams rose to become one of the greatest funny men to ever grace our screens, blending weird, wonderful, flawed and fabulous characters with gut-busting humor that continues to derive laughs all over the world today, ten years on from his death.
And yet Williams’ time on this earth was also marred by tragedy, the sort that ultimately left the actor feeling as though life was simply untenable. On August 11, 2014, aged 63, Williams was found dead of an apparent suicide at his home.
Though through his acting career he had realized immeasurable success, Williams suffered from issues including alcohol addiction, a condition for which he spent several weeks at the Hazelden facility in Minnesota during 2014 in a bid to strengthen his commitment to sobriety.
As per reports, the Jumanji actor had previously battled alcoholism and cocaine abuse in the early 1980s but quit after the overdose death of his friend, John Belushi, in 1982.
Following the Hollywood icon’s death in 2014, his publicist told how he had been “battling severe depression”. His wife, Susan Schneider, later disclosed more information regarding his demise, revealing that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s months before his passing.
An autopsy revealed that the actor had in fact been suffering from Lewy body dementia (LBD), leading to Williams struggling with significant changes in memory, movement, personality, reasoning, sleep, and mood.
“None of the doctors knew that there was this ghost disease underlying all of this. When that was revealed, that was like essentially finding out the name of my husband’s killer,” Schneider said at the time.
Needless to say, Williams’ passing affected a lot of people adversely, not least his closest friends and family.
One man who fell firmly into the first category was Sir Billy Connolly, who himself has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. When asked what he might have done differently had he known Williams planned on taking his own life, the comedian and actor said: “You have to give a guy the position that he’s wise enough to make up his own mind,” he said. “I don’t think so,” he added, when asked if he wouldn’t have tried to save his life, Connolly admitted.
Now 81, Connolly also revealed that he and Williams had regularly discussed their experiences with Parkinson’s over the phone, and would routinely express their close friendship and love for one another.
In the BBC program In My Own Words, Connolly reflected on his bond with Williams sharing how the actor had called him during the week of his passing to invite him to dinner.
Of their final dinner, Connolly said: “He phoned me and said, ‘Let’s have dinner,’ and during the dinner, he said, ‘I love you.’ I said thanks very much. He said, ‘Do you believe me?’ I said ‘Of course I do.’ He said, ‘Believe me, I love you.’ I said, ‘That’s great.’”
“I thought ‘how weird, how weird for him to say that, it’s not like his usual.’ He was dead on the weekend,” Connolly continued.
Rest in peace, Robin Williams.