Remembering Robin Williams

This is a very tough post to write, if there was one actor who defined the ninties and growing up for me, it was Robin Williams, we didn't have many VHS tapes when i was growing up, probably only about fifteen, but of those fifteen we had Hook, Flubber and Jumanji, in addition we had Aladdin, featuring Williams as the Genie. Williams' passing is a huge tragedy for the film industry, so soon after the tragic loss of Philip Seymour Hoffman we have lost another actor to this toxic cocktail or drugs and depression.

Robin Williams defined my childhood, his role in Aladdin will go down as one of the greatest pieces of voice work ever heard on celluloid, tied perhaps only with Ellen Degeneres in Finding Nemo. Williams improvised most of his lines and the character is iconic and funny, the film showcases Williams' skills as a stand up comic and his work is one of the best things about this movie. Flubber, is also a film which i watched over and over again, the tale of a mad scientist who creates a substance with a life of it's own, in Hook he plays a grown up Peter Pan, and in Jumanji he plays a man sucked into a video game for fifty years.

Despite being a comic actor, Williams was a thespian of incredible depth, an actor whose performances were rarely one note, and who always brought humanity to any role that he played. His background as a stand up comedian is showcased in films such as Aladdin and Good Morning Vietnam, he shows us a softer side in Good Will Hunting and Dead Poets Society. His attitude to drag was shown in The Birdcage and Mrs Doubtfire.

His filmography shows him to be an actor of huge skill and he appeared in a huge variety of movies, but i will remember Robin Williams, simply as the man who taught me how to laugh, the man who defined my childhood and the man who was fearless in the way he accomplished his craft, and the man before whom i could sit for hours watching the escapades of a mad scientist, an AWOL radio journalist or a blue genie dressed as Pinocchio. Thank You. You will be sorely missed.