47 Fun Facts About Robin Williams

In which city was Robin Williams born on July 21, 1951?

Chicago was his birthplace, but he finished growing up in California: his father retired when Robin was 16 and moved the family to Marin County, where he found his high school's drama club.

Williams's father, Robert, was a senior executive at which car company?

Ford employed Robert Williams as a senior executive; his son spent a lonely boyhood playing mostly by himself in the family's large house, and learned early to use humour to win people over.

Which future film star was the only other student John Houseman picked for Juilliard's Advanced Program with Robin Williams in 1973?

Christopher Reeve stayed his close friend for life: after Reeve's 1995 riding accident, Williams burst into his hospital room posing as a Russian proctologist and drew his first laugh since the fall.

Robin Williams began his stand-up career at the Holy City Zoo, a comedy club in which city?

San Francisco's Holy City Zoo let him work his way up from tending bar; he met his first wife, Valerie Velardi, while bartending in the city in 1976.

Williams was cast as the alien Mork in a 1978 episode of which sitcom, before getting his own spin-off?

Happy Days got its alien after Garry Marshall's son saw Star Wars and asked for a space episode; Mork was written off as Richie's dream, then proved too popular to leave there.

Mork & Mindy is set in which Colorado city?

Boulder is seen for real in the opening titles: before the series began, Williams and Pam Dawber went to the Colorado city to be filmed around its streets.

Which veteran comedian joined Mork & Mindy's final season as Mearth, the couple's child born looking elderly?

Jonathan Winters, Williams's comedy idol, played Mearth: Orkans age backwards, so the egg Mork laid hatched into a child who already looked elderly.

Williams's first starring film role was as which comic-strip character, in a 1980 Robert Altman musical?

Popeye gave Williams prosthetic forearms and a pipe clamped in his mouth; he mumbled so much around it that much of his dialogue had to be recorded again.

The Sweethaven set for Williams's 1980 musical was built on which Mediterranean island?

Malta's Anchor Bay got a whole wooden village for the shoot; instead of being torn down afterwards, the Sweethaven set was left standing and turned into a seaside fun park.

Williams earned his first Oscar nomination as a real-life Armed Forces Radio DJ in which 1987 film?

Good Morning, Vietnam, directed by Barry Levinson, let Williams improvise most of the radio-broadcast scenes and earned him a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy.

Which real Saigon DJ's experiences loosely inspired Williams's 1987 breakthrough film?

Adrian Cronauer said little of the film matched his life: far from a rebel, he called himself a lifelong card-carrying Republican, and he spent his earnings from the film on law school.

In Awakenings (1990), Robin Williams's Dr Malcolm Sayer is modelled on which doctor, who wrote the book behind the film?

Oliver Sacks found patients who had spent decades frozen like statues after a sleeping-sickness epidemic; he gave them a then-experimental drug, L-dopa, and wrote the book about their return to life.

Which Monty Python member directed The Fisher King (1991), with Robin Williams as homeless Parry?

Terry Gilliam took the job as a director-for-hire, the first time he had filmed someone else's script, after his own Baron Munchausen ran far over budget.

In Steven Spielberg's Hook (1991), Williams plays a grown-up Peter Pan who has become what?

A lawyer too busy for his own children, Peter Banning has forgotten Neverland entirely until Dustin Hoffman's Hook kidnaps them to lure him back.

Robin Williams, then earning about $8 million a film, agreed to voice Aladdin's Genie for roughly how much?

$75,000 was the union-scale fee he accepted, saying he wanted to leave something wonderful behind for his children, on condition that his voice not be used to sell products.

Amid the row over Aladdin's marketing, Disney sent Robin Williams a painting by which artist?

Pablo Picasso's painting did not end the row; Williams came back as the Genie only after new studio chief Joe Roth apologised in public in 1994.

Which 1997 remake of The Absent-Minded Professor starred Williams as Professor Philip Brainard?

Flubber, the bouncing green goo he invents, so absorbs Williams's Professor Brainard that he misses his own wedding, and not for the first time.

In Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), which actress plays Miranda, the ex-wife who hires Robin Williams's character without recognising him?

Sally Field played Miranda Hillard in the film of Anne Fine's British novel Madame Doubtfire; the couple never get back together, and the story ends with them sharing the children instead.

The Birdcage (1996) moved the drag club of La Cage aux Folles from Saint-Tropez to which US city?

Miami Beach's South Beach houses the club run by Williams's Armand, whose partner Albert, its star act, poses as his wife to fool their son's future in-laws, a conservative senator's family.

Williams won his only Oscar for playing therapist Sean Maguire in which film?

Good Will Hunting finally brought Williams an Oscar at his fourth nomination: he had lost three times as a leading man and won for a supporting role.

In the film that won Williams his Oscar, his character teaches psychology at which institution?

Bunker Hill Community College is where Sean teaches psychology, far from the MIT chair of his old college roommate, who calls him in only after other therapists have given up on the young genius.

In which 1998 film does Williams play a real-life doctor who treats patients with humour and compassion?

Patch Adams began as a patient: Hunter 'Patch' Adams decided to become a doctor while in a mental hospital, and later opened a free clinic for people without insurance.

Bicentennial Man (1999) is based on a story by which science-fiction author?

Isaac Asimov's story follows Andrew, a household robot who begins to show feelings and creativity; the title comes from the two centuries he lives while trying to become human.

In Insomnia (2002), Williams's murderer is pursued through Alaska by a sleep-deprived detective played by whom?

Al Pacino played detective Will Dormer, sleepless under Alaska's endless daylight and wracked by guilt after shooting his own partner in the fog, a secret Williams's killer saw and uses.

In 1982 Robin Williams starred in which film of a John Irving novel?

The World According to Garp cast Williams as a novelist outshone by his own mother: her feminist book is an overnight sensation that makes her rich and famous, a success his fiction never matches.

In the Night at the Museum films, Williams plays a wax figure of which US president?

Theodore Roosevelt has a real claim on the building: his father helped found the American Museum of Natural History, where the first film is set, and its entrance hall is a memorial to the president.

From 1986 Robin Williams hosted HBO's Comic Relief benefits for the homeless with Whoopi Goldberg and which other comedian?

Billy Crystal made up the trio that fronted every HBO telethon, though the charity itself, set up to help America's homeless, was the creation of comedy writer Bob Zmuda.

Robin Williams began touring with the USO in October 2002, flying out to entertain American troops in which country?

Afghanistan it was: he joked with soldiers in a bombed-out hangar at Bagram air base, and reporters had to hold the story until he had left the country because his family feared for his safety.

Williams's daughter, born in 1989, was named after a princess in which video game series?

The Legend of Zelda's princess gave Zelda Williams her name, and in 2011 Nintendo put father and daughter together in a television commercial for a new edition of one of the games.

Which hobby did Robin Williams take up partly as a substitute for drugs?

Cycling took over: he built up a large collection of bicycles, one valued enough that his heirs had to settle between them who would keep it after his death.

Which Saturday Night Live star did Robin Williams visit hours before the star's fatal overdose in 1982?

John Belushi died at the Chateau Marmont on 5 March 1982; Williams had dropped in on him there hours earlier, and the shock helped push him to give up cocaine.

Robin Williams broke off a stand-up tour in 2009 to have surgery on which organ?

Heart surgery in March 2009 gave him a new aortic valve after he grew short of breath on tour; he was back on the road that September, and the tour ended as a television special.

What was the name of the stand-up tour Robin Williams took on the road in 2008 after six years away?

Weapons of Self-Destruction opened in September 2008, stopped the following spring while he underwent surgery, then resumed that autumn and was filmed for HBO in Washington, DC.

Which CBS sitcom starring Williams as an advertising executive premiered in 2013 and lasted one season?

The Crazy Ones took its stories from life: creator David E. Kelley modelled Williams's Simon Roberts on John Montgomery, a veteran of the Leo Burnett advertising agency.

Robin Williams won five of which award, the first in 1980 for Reality… What a Concept?

Grammy Awards came to him five times: four for comedy albums, starting with that recording of his 1979 stage act, and one for something far gentler, a children's album of the tall tale Pecos Bill.

The director of The Godfather cast Robin Williams as a ten-year-old boy in a grown man's body in which 1996 film?

Jack was Coppola's fable about a boy who ages four times faster than normal: at ten he looks forty, is mocked when he finally starts school, then wins his classmates over on the basketball court.

Robin Williams's autopsy found Lewy body disease, which had been diagnosed during his life as what?

Parkinson's disease was the diagnosis he had been given and had not yet made public; his widow Susan Schneider later told the story of the real illness in the documentary Robin's Wish.

Robin Williams's second wife, Marsha Garces, produced which of his films?

Mrs. Doubtfire, the comedy about a father who poses as a nanny, was produced by the former nanny he had married; they divorced in 2010, and in 2011 he married the designer Susan Schneider.

In Moscow on the Hudson (1984), Robin Williams's Soviet circus musician defects in the middle of which New York department store?

Bloomingdale's is where Vladimir, a saxophonist on tour with the Moscow circus, suddenly decides to defect; one of the store's security guards becomes his first American friend.

Robin Williams played President Dwight D. Eisenhower in which 2013 film?

The Butler starts Cecil Gaines's White House service under Williams's Eisenhower in 1957, though the real butler who inspired the film had begun his 34 years there under Harry Truman.

Robin Williams made his Broadway acting debut in 2011 as which animal, a ghost who wanders wartime Baghdad?

A tiger: in Rajiv Joseph's play, set during the Iraq War, the animal is shot by an American soldier guarding the city's zoo and spends the rest of the evening haunting the streets as a talkative ghost.

What Orkan greeting, given with a split-fingered handshake, did Robin Williams's Mork turn into a catchphrase?

Nanu nanu caught on so widely that Williams wearied of it: his director Howard Storm recalled having to coax him into keeping up Mork's Orkan habits in the later seasons.

Robin Williams plays an actor who is literally out of focus in Deconstructing Harry (1997), a comedy by which writer-director?

Woody Allen wrote the gag for Mel, one of the characters invented by the film's novelist hero: in the middle of a shoot the actor himself, not the picture, slides out of focus and turns blurry.

What did Williams do at his Mork audition when asked to take a seat?

Sat on his head is what he did, upside down in the chair; Garry Marshall said he hired him because he was the only alien who auditioned.

Williams appeared opposite Steve Martin in a 1988 off-Broadway staging of which play?

Waiting for Godot sold out as soon as tickets went on sale: two star comics were playing Beckett's tramps in a Lincoln Center theatre with only 299 seats.

Which star of The Simpsons voiced the Genie in The Return of Jafar after Robin Williams refused the sequel?

Dan Castellaneta, the voice of Homer Simpson, kept the lamp warm through the sequel and a television series; Williams took the Genie back for the third film once Disney had apologised.

Which Harry Potter role did Williams want, only to be blocked by a British-only casting rule?

Rubeus Hagrid was the part he wanted from director Chris Columbus, who had already directed him in three films; Columbus still held to the British-only casting rule and turned his old colleague down.