The day Robin Williams passed away, the world lost a real gem.
Williams, a renowned comedian and performer who was almost unmatched, committed suicide in 2014 after receiving an incorrect Parkinson’s disease diagnosis.
It’s hard to believe that a decade will pass without the Jumanji and Mrs. Doubtfire star by next year. Millions of people throughout the world are terribly missing him, and his death has left a massive vacuum in the entertainment business that can never be replaced.
The depth of Williams’ struggles—which the world was only made aware of after his death—may have been the most tragic aspect of his passing. He had long been fighting battles with internal demons, yet he put up a brave face for the public and was never less than entirely committed to making others laugh.
That’s exactly what fellow actor Sam Neill wrote about in his biography, Did I Ever Tell You This?The “loneliest man on a lonely planet” was Williams, after all.
The late Robin Williams’ friendship with Sam Neill, the actor of Jurassic Park, is reportedly revealed, and it’s enough to make our hearts hurt even more.
Neill wrote about his experience working with Williams on Bicentennial Man (1999) in his memoir Did I Ever Tell You This? He also described how he became close friends with the comedian while making the movie.
The New Zealand actor, who recently disclosed that he had been battling stage three cancer, wrote in the book that Williams was the “saddest” and “funniest” man he had ever encountered.
Neill writes, “We would talk about this and that, sometimes even about the work we were about to do,” in passages from his memoir that were published by People.
Williams is “irresistibly, outrageously, irrepressibly, gigantically funny,” according to him.
However, Neill was also open about the suffering he perceived underneath his co-star’s humorous exterior.
“The world was his oyster,” Neill writes. “He had fame, he was rich, people loved him, and he had great kids.” Nevertheless, I had more sympathy for him than I can say.
“On a lonely planet, he was the most alone man.”
Additionally, Neill stated that Williams was “deeply depressed and inconsolably solitary,” adding that he could feel a “dark space inside from the minute he flung open the door.”
It is undeniable that Williams was engaged in combat with forces out to end his life. He was given a false diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease in 2014; it was found that he actually had Lewy body dementia after he passed away.
According to Susan Schneider Williams, who wed Robin in 2011, “almost every part of his brain was being attacked.” He felt himself falling apart.
“A disease for which there is no cure,” she said, describing his condition.
“Robin’s brain suffered one of the worst cases of Lewy body destruction that medical professionals have ever seen, but his heart persevered through it all.”
Every time I hear of Robin Williams’s challenges, my heart breaks even more. A wonderful man and a truly inspirational person.
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