Robin Williams: Age, Wife, Children, Net Worth & Movies

Robin Williams could walk on stage with no plan at all and still leave an audience breathless. He was a stand-up comedian who thought at lightning speed, a film actor who could be heartbreaking in one scene and hilarious in the next, and a voice artist whose most famous character, the Genie in Aladdin, is still quoted by children and adults alike.

He was born in Chicago in 1951 and died in California in 2014, at the age of 63. In the years between, he became one of the most loved performers in the world. His films include Dead Poets Society, Mrs. Doubtfire, Good Will Hunting, and Jumanji, and his television breakthrough, Mork & Mindy, made him a household name before he had even turned thirty.

This article answers the questions people ask most about Robin Williams: how old was he, who were his wives, how many children did he have, what was his net worth, and which movies should you watch first? Where reports differ, that difference is stated openly.

Quick Facts

How Old Was Robin Williams When He Died?

Robin Williams was born on July 21, 1951, in Chicago, Illinois. He died on August 11, 2014, at his home in Paradise Cay, California. He was 63 years old at the time of his death, having celebrated his sixty-third birthday only a few weeks earlier.

If he had lived, he would have turned 75 in July 2026. His career was still active in his final years, with film and television work continuing right up to 2014.

His full name was Robin McLaurin Williams. The middle name later became a family tribute, when his eldest son named his own child McLaurin.

What Was Robin Williams’s Childhood Like?

Robin Williams was the son of Robert Fitzgerald Williams, a senior executive at the Ford Motor Company, and Laurie McLaurin, a former model. He grew up in a comfortable home, first in the Chicago area and later in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. As a boy, he was often the class clown, the child who could make a whole classroom laugh.

The family moved again when Robin Williams was a teenager, this time to Marin County in California. He attended Redwood High School and graduated in 1969. That split between private shyness and public energy would stay with him for his whole life.

After school, he studied political science at Claremont McKenna College, but he did not finish the course. He moved instead to the College of Marin, where he began to study theatre seriously. It was the first clear sign that performing was not a hobby for him, but the work he was meant to do.

How Did Robin Williams Train as an Actor?

In 1973, Robin Williams won a place at the Juilliard School in New York, one of the most respected drama schools in America. One of his classmates was Christopher Reeve, who would later become Superman and a close friend.

His teacher at Juilliard was John Houseman, a legendary actor and producer. Houseman later told Robin Williams that he had already learned everything the school could teach him, and advised him to leave and start working. Robin Williams took that advice and left Juilliard in 1976, without graduating.

Back in California, he began performing stand-up comedy in San Francisco. He started at small clubs, sometimes working as a bartender between sets, and built a reputation for routines that nobody else could copy. His act was fast, full of voices and characters, and almost entirely improvised. Audiences had never quite seen anything like it.

How Did Robin Williams Become Famous?

Robin Williams became famous through television, almost by accident. In 1978, he appeared as a guest star on Happy Days, playing an alien named Mork who had come to Earth to study human beings. The character was only meant to appear once, but the audience response was so strong that the producers gave him his own show.

That show was Mork & Mindy, which ran from 1978 to 1982, with Pam Dawber playing Mindy, the young woman who takes Mork in. Robin Williams played the alien with a mixture of innocence and chaos, inventing much of his dialogue on the spot. The show made him a national star and won him his first Golden Globe Award.

At the same time, he was building a stand-up career that filled theatres across America. He recorded comedy albums such as Reality… What a Concept and A Night at the Met, and his live shows became legendary for their speed. Fans who enjoy the stand-up era of Steve Martin will recognise the same 1970s comedy-club world that shaped Robin Williams.

Which Robin Williams Movies Made Him a Film Star?

Robin Williams made his film debut as the leading man in Popeye in 1980. The film was not a great success, but it proved that he could carry a movie. His real breakthrough as a film actor came two years later with The World According to Garp in 1982, in which he played a sensitive, thoughtful writer. Critics began to take him seriously as a dramatic actor.

In 1984, he played a Russian circus musician who defects to America in Moscow on the Hudson. Then came the role that changed everything. In Good Morning, Vietnam in 1987, he played Adrian Cronauer, an army radio DJ in Saigon who lifted the spirits of soldiers with jokes and rock music. The performance earned him his first Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor.

Two years later, he played John Keating, the inspirational English teacher in Dead Poets Society. The film’s message about seizing the day, expressed in the Latin phrase “carpe diem,” became part of popular culture. Robin Williams received his second Academy Award nomination for the role, and the film remains one of the most quoted school dramas ever made.

What Were Robin Williams’s Greatest Dramatic Roles?

Robin Williams was at his best when a role asked him to be funny and sad at the same time. In Awakenings in 1990, he played a doctor helping patients who had been frozen in a sleeping state for decades. In The Fisher King in 1991, he played a homeless man broken by tragedy, and he received his third Academy Award nomination.

His greatest dramatic triumph came in 1997, in Good Will Hunting. He played Sean Maguire, a therapist helping a troubled young genius played by Matt Damon. The performance is quiet, patient, and deeply moving, and it won Robin Williams the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. It remains the role most often cited when people explain why he was more than just a comedian.

Later in his career, he surprised audiences again with two dark films in 2002. In One Hour Photo, he played a lonely photo-lab worker who becomes obsessed with a family he has never met. In Insomnia, he played a crime novelist suspected of murder in Alaska. Both roles are now regarded as among his finest performances.

What Were Robin Williams’s Best Comedy and Family Movies?

For many families, Robin Williams is remembered first as a comic and a voice artist. In Hook in 1991, he played a grown-up Peter Pan who has forgotten his childhood, opposite Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook. In Aladdin in 1992, he voiced the Genie, creating a character so full of jokes, impressions, and songs that the animators built much of the performance around his improvised recording sessions.

In Mrs. Doubtfire in 1993, he played a divorced father who disguises himself as an elderly Scottish nanny so he can spend time with his children. The film was a huge commercial success and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture in the comedy category. In Jumanji in 1995, he played a man who had been trapped inside a magical board game since childhood, and the film became a favourite for a whole generation of children.

He returned to family films again and again. He voiced Ramon the penguin in Happy Feet in 2006 and its sequel in 2011, and he played Theodore Roosevelt in the Night at the Museum films from 2006 to 2014. He also played a well-meaning doctor in Patch Adams in 1998.

What Awards Did Robin Williams Win?

Robin Williams won almost every major entertainment award available to an American performer. He was nominated for four Academy Awards and won one, for Best Supporting Actor in Good Will Hunting. His other Oscar nominations were for Good Morning, Vietnam, Dead Poets Society, and The Fisher King.

He won two Primetime Emmy Awards, both for variety performances, and six Golden Globe Awards, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in 2005. He also won five Grammy Awards for his comedy albums and recordings, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2009, he was named a Disney Legend, an honour given to people who made an extraordinary contribution to the Disney company.

His generation of film stars included many great names, and fans often place him alongside performers such as Jack Nicholson when ranking the finest screen actors of the late twentieth century.

Who Was Robin Williams’s Wife?

Robin Williams was married three times. His first wife was Valerie Velardi, a former dancer and actress, whom he married in 1978. They were married for ten years and divorced in 1988.

His second wife was Marsha Garces, who had worked as his children’s nanny before they married in 1989. They divorced in 2010, after twenty-one years of marriage.

His third wife was Susan Schneider, a graphic designer and artist, whom he married in October 2011. She remained his wife until his death in 2014, and she has since spoken publicly about his final illness.

How Many Children Did Robin Williams Have?

Robin Williams had three children. His eldest child, Zachary Pym Williams, known as Zak, was born in 1983 during his marriage to Valerie Velardi. Zak has worked in mental health advocacy and has spoken openly about grief and about his father’s legacy since 2014.

His two younger children were born during his marriage to Marsha Garces. His daughter, Zelda Rae Williams, was born in 1989, and his son, Cody Alan Williams, was born in 1991. Zelda was named after Princess Zelda, the character from the Legend of Zelda video games, because her father was a keen gamer. She has since become an actor and director in her own right.

Cody Williams married in 2019, on what would have been his father’s sixty-eighth birthday. Zak Williams became a father the same year, when his son McLaurin was born.

What Was Robin Williams’s Net Worth?

Robin Williams’s net worth at the time of his death is most commonly reported as about $50 million. That figure comes from widely cited celebrity wealth trackers, including Celebrity Net Worth, and it is repeated by most mainstream biographies. It is an estimate, not an official figure, because no complete public account of his estate has ever been published.

Some reports have put the value higher, in a range of $50 million to $100 million, and others have noted that he was worth considerably more at the peak of his career. During the 1990s, when he was one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood, his fortune was reported to be around $100 million. Two expensive divorces, a slower run of film work in later years, and the cost of maintaining large properties are usually given as the reasons his wealth fell from that peak.

There was also a dispute over his estate after his death, between his widow and his children, over personal belongings. That dispute was settled in 2015. The honest answer is this: Robin Williams died a wealthy man, with an estate most sources place at around $50 million, but the exact figure cannot be verified.

What Happened to Robin Williams in His Final Years?

Robin Williams continued to work in his final years, even as his health declined. In 2013, he returned to television in The Crazy Ones, a CBS sitcom in which he starred alongside Sarah Michelle Gellar as a father-and-daughter advertising team. The show ran for one season and was cancelled shortly before his death.

Four of his films were released after his death, including Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, in which he played Theodore Roosevelt for the final time.

In his final months, he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, but the autopsy later revealed that he had in fact been suffering from Lewy body disease, a condition that affects memory, movement, and mood. His widow has since become an advocate for research into Lewy body dementia. His death on August 11, 2014, was ruled a suicide, and it shocked fans around the world.

What Are Some Lesser-Known Facts About Robin Williams?

Robin Williams’s life was full of details that never made it into the headlines. Here are some of the most interesting:

• He was a passionate cyclist who owned a large collection of bicycles and regularly rode with professional riders. Cycling was one of the few hobbies that could calm his famously fast mind.
• He improvised so much of the Genie’s dialogue in Aladdin that the film’s writers built scenes around his recording sessions, rather than the other way around.
• He fell out with Disney over the marketing of Aladdin, after the company used the Genie far more heavily in advertising than he had agreed to. He later returned to voice the character again.
• He co-founded Comic Relief USA with Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg, raising money for people experiencing homelessness in America.
• He entertained American troops overseas many times, including performances in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he often said those shows were among the most meaningful of his career.

Frequently Asked Questions About Robin Williams

How old was Robin Williams when he died?

Robin Williams was 63 years old when he died on August 11, 2014. He was born on July 21, 1951, in Chicago, Illinois, so he had celebrated his sixty-third birthday just three weeks before his death.

Who was Robin Williams’s wife at the time of his death?

Robin Williams’s wife at the time of his death was Susan Schneider, whom he married in 2011. He had previously been married to Valerie Velardi from 1978 to 1988, and to Marsha Garces from 1989 to 2010.

How many children did Robin Williams have?

Robin Williams had three children: Zachary, born in 1983, Zelda, born in 1989, and Cody, born in 1991. Zachary was his son with his first wife, while Zelda and Cody were his children with his second wife.

What was Robin Williams’s net worth?

Robin Williams’s net worth at the time of his death is most commonly estimated at about $50 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth and other widely cited sources. Some reports place his estate in a wider range of $50 million to $100 million, and he was reported to be worth around $100 million at the peak of his career in the 1990s.

What was Robin Williams’s best movie?

There is no single answer. For drama, most critics point to Good Will Hunting or Dead Poets Society. For comedy, Mrs. Doubtfire and Aladdin are the most popular choices, and for family adventure, Jumanji is a favourite.

Did Robin Williams win an Oscar?

Yes, Robin Williams won one Academy Award. He won Best Supporting Actor for his role as Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting in 1998. He was also nominated for Good Morning, Vietnam, Dead Poets Society, and The Fisher King, but did not win for those films.

What illness did Robin Williams have?

Robin Williams had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease before his death, but his autopsy revealed Lewy body disease, a brain disorder affecting thinking, movement, and mood. His widow now campaigns for Lewy body dementia research.

Where can I learn more about Robin Williams?

The most complete single overview of his life and career is his Wikipedia biography, which covers his early life, his films, his awards, and his personal life in detail, with references to the original sources.

Conclusion: The Final Thoughts on Robin Williams

Robin Williams left behind a body of work that is hard to summarise in one article. He was a comedian who could invent a whole world out of nothing, a dramatic actor who could break your heart with a single quiet line, and a voice artist who gave childhoods their soundtrack.

His life also carries a serious lesson. The man who made millions of people laugh was privately dealing with a devastating brain disease in his final year. Remembering that makes his generosity and his charity work seem even more remarkable.

If you are new to his films, start with Dead Poets Society, then watch Good Will Hunting, and finish with Mrs. Doubtfire. That range is why, more than a decade after his death, he is still regarded as one of the greatest entertainers of all time.