Robin Williams found dead at 63
Peter Bradshaw: 'A big heart and a staggering talent'
Robin Williams: what did he mean to you?
Decca Aitkenhead meets Robin Williams in 2010
When the notion of getting in touch with one's inner child entered popular currency, the standup comedian and actor Robin Williams, who has died aged 63 in a suspected suicide, was ripe to be its poster-boy. Partly it was his limitless energy and floodlight smile, or the frantic chatter that made it sound as if he were constantly interrupting himself or speaking in tongues. But he also resembled strongly a hirsute toddler who had broken out of the playpen to make whoopee.
Many of his most popular performances were as child-men rampaging through the prissy adult world. His breakthrough came as the naïve extra-terrestrial Mork in the US sitcom Mork & Mindy, which ran from 1978 to 1982. For that part, the red-and-silver costume that he donned for a monologue at the end of each episode even resembled an infant's romper suit. In Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), he played the real-life DJ Adrian Cronauer, whose wackiness in the face of war made him a hit with American troops. A swerve into straighter acting, as the literature teacher who challenges convention at a stuffy school in the late-1950s in Dead Poets Society (1989), did not upset this trend. Instead, he transferred deftly his comic skills into a dramatic setting as his character liberated pupils formerly rigid with obedience.
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