Author: Susannah Cahalan / Source: Fox News
Robin Williams struggled to remember his lines.
This was unusual for the hyperverbal, Oscar-winning actor, and it hit him hard in Vancouver in 2014 during the filming of “Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb,” the third movie in the successful family franchise.
“He was sobbing in my arms at the end of every day. It was horrible. Horrible,” makeup artist Cheri Minns recalled. “I said to his people, ‘I’m a makeup artist. I don’t have the capacity to deal with what’s happening to him.’ ”
“He was sobbing in my arms at the end of every day. It was horrible. Horrible. I said to his people, ‘I’m a makeup artist. I don’t have the capacity to deal with what’s happening to him.’ ”
– Cheri Minns, makeup artist
Minns suggested to Robin that he return to stand-up to get out of his rut and reclaim some of his lost confidence. But Robin refused.
“He just cried and said, ‘I can’t, Cheri. I don’t know how anymore. I don’t know how to be funny.’ ”
How could this be the same lovable weirdo who coined the greeting “nanu nanu” as Mork from Ork; the radio DJ who famously brayed, “GOOOOOOD MORNING, VIETNAM!”; the widower therapist who broke our hearts in “Good Will Hunting”?
The reality — though Robin didn’t know it — was that he was suffering from a pernicious neurodegenerative disease that was in the process of robbing him of his talents, his brain and his very self.
This heartbreaking interaction is recounted in the biography “Robin” (Henry Holt & Co.) by Dave Itzkoff, out this month, which provides new details about the comic great’s final days and the harsh reality of what it’s like to lose a once-in-a-generation mind.
Robin McLaurin Williams, born in Chicago on July 21, 1951, had a privileged but lonely childhood, spending hours playing with toy soldiers in his attic. He attended Juilliard, then headed out West to blow up the Los Angeles and San Francisco comedy scenes.
Longtime friend Billy Crystal described seeing Robin kill on stage: “It was electric, and we all just sat there and went, ‘Oh, my god, what is this?’ It was like trying to catch a comet with a baseball glove.”
Robin landed the guest role of Mork from Ork on the hit show “Happy Days” in February 1978. The character was so indelible it led to a spin-off show, “Mork & Mindy,” which, by the following spring in 1979, reached 60 million viewers. Robin Williams was now a household name.
Despite rampant drug and alcohol addiction (he famously said cocaine was “God’s way of telling you you’re making too much money”), Robin easily found big-screen stardom. He earned an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of the verbose Vietnam radio host in 1987’s “Good Morning, Vietnam.” Other critically acclaimed roles followed, including 1989’s “Dead Poets Society,” 1991’s “The Fisher King,” and 1997’s “Good Will Hunting,” which landed him an Oscar for his portrayal of a caring therapist to Matt Damon’s angsty genius.
Robin also piggybacked from one moneymaker to the next as the face of comedy. He voiced the spastic, singing Genie in Disney’s 1992 film “Aladdin” and played a cross-dressing nanny in 1993’s “Mrs. Doubtfire” and a man trapped in a board game in 1995’s “Jumanji.”
Robin Williams could evidently do no wrong. But a series of commercial and critical flops followed — from the maudlin…
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