ROBIN WILLIAMS: PLAYBOY INTERVIEW
(1992)
by Larry Grobel
In many ways, Robin Williams is just a big kid. Watch him play with eight-year-old son Zachary. Williams is positioned in front of the laptop computer, joystick in hand, as planes fly at him on the screen. He pops them off with childlike enthusiasm. “This is great!” he says, racking up kills. “Spielberg loves these, too, you know.” Williams is just back from his day on the set of Hook, in which he plays, appropriately, Peter Pan, the boy who wouldn’t grow up. And what about Zachary, Williams’ son and playmate? He stands by quietly as dad downs more planes, patiently waiting his turn. In other ways, Williams has grown up quite nicely. The stand-up comedian with the quicksilver mind who became an overnight sensation in Mork & Mindy has matured into something of a rarity-a true genius in the world of stand-up comedy, as well as one of the country’s most respected dramatic actors. Many comics have had success in the movies, but few have enjoyed the esteem that Williams does (or the two Oscar nominations). Nor have many overcome the personal demons Williams faced early in stardom when drugs and alcohol threatened to destroy his career, if not his life. Now 40, married for a second time and the father of three children, Williams is at his peak. He appears in movies of substance, not mindless comedies, and he has created a family life in Northern California far from the temptations of the Hollywood fast lane. When Playboy first interviewed Williams in 1982, his career was at a crossroads. Mork & Mindy had nose-dived in the ratings and was canceled after a four-year run. His first movie, Popeye, had been a bomb, and his second, The World According to Garp, earned few rave reviews. But his stand-up comedy routines were legendary, racing from a sometimes simple premise-with mimicry, one-liners, characters and anything else he could think of-to cover an encyclopedia of subjects, leaving his audience breathless. The New York Times described them as having a “perfervid pace and wild, associative leaps,” and worried that his “improvisational method seemed tinged with madness.” Much has happened to Williams in the ten years since that first interview. After the death of acquaintance John Belushi, he stopped using drugs. His first marriage fell apart in a very public manner, and he’s still angry about the way the press covered his divorce and marriage to the woman who had been his son’s nanny; his father, a Detroit automobile industry executive, died. Despite the personal upheaval, his professional life started to jell. His stand-up routines became, in the words of The New York Times, “sharper and less frenetic.” His successful concerts, albums, video tapes and cable specials put him in the top rank of comedians. In 1986, he joined Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal to found Comic Relief, a yearly benefit for the homeless that appears on HBO. So far, it has raised more than $18,000,000. He also makes appearances in support of literacy and is an advocate of women’s rights. But it was his development as an actor that surprised many. Not all of his film roles were memorable, especially at first, but as his list of credits began to build, so did his reputation. He followed Popeye and Garp with The Survivors (which also starred Walter Matthau), Moscow on the Hudson, Club Paradise and Cadillac Man. His performance in Good Morning, Vietnam earned his first chance at an Academy Award; his second came with Dead Poets Society. He followed that by co-starring in Awakenings with Robert De Niro, and with a tasty, morbid cameo as a “defrocked” psychiatrist in Dead Again. His performance in The Fisher King has received excellent reviews. And, of course, he’s headlining one of the most anticipated Christmas films-Hook, in which he co-stars with Dustin Hoffman (who plays Hook), Julia Roberts (Tinkerbell), Maggie Smith (Wendy) and Bob Hoskins (the pirate Smee). Director Terry Gilliam has worked with Williams twice, most recently in The Fisher King and earlier in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, in which Williams appeared as a giant-headed man in the moon. “The thing with Robin is, he has the ability to go from manic to mad to tender and vulnerable,” says Gilliam, who was a founding member of Monty Python. “He’s the most unique mind on the planet. There’s nobody like him out there.” To catch up with one of our national treasures, we sent Contributing Editor Lawrence Grobel (whose previous interviews include Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro) to spend three weekends with the Pan Man. Grobel’s report: “Since Robin was smack in the middle of making Hook, I was aware he was giving up precious family time to do the interview. Yet, once we started talking, I knew it couldn’t be rushed. Williams is a stream-of-consciousness talker, and ideas bounce off him like atoms in a blender. Give him a topic-any topic-and he can do five minutes. “When he was on a roll, he would often lean toward the tape recorder to make sure nothing was garbled or lost. But he can also be quiet and serious, concerned about social issues and politics. And sometimes, when his pregnant wife, Marsha, would enter the room, he would simply become very loving, almost apologizing for spending this time away from her. “Throughout our time together, Williams was open and friendly, often more concerned about my welfare than he was about his own. When my car failed to start after one of our sessions, I called my wife to come get me and Robin volunteered himself, his publicist and his gardener to push the car out of the way until a tow truck arrived. The thought of these three men struggling with a car up a steep hill-and the ensuing chiropractic bills-worried me enough that I tried to start it one more time. This time it worked. ‘It’s OK. I yelled. I’m outa here.’ “‘Wait!’ Robin yelled. ‘You better call your wife.’ “How can you not like a guy who’s willing to risk his back pushing your car and then reminds you to call your wife.”
PLAYBOY: This is our second time with you. How did the first interview affect you?
WILLIAMS: To tell you the truth. I can’t remember it.