Of all the denouements that feature Robin Williams, this one was the most out of character for the beloved actor and stand-up comic. When the news of his alleged suicide broke on Monday night, the death did not echo any goodbye, any parting he so skillfully essayed in his films?they were mostly warm and had made many cry happy tears. Instead, the Oscar-winner?s fragile hold over depression and alcoholism was forced into fans? reckoning. It wasn?t exactly a secret that Williams had been battling these demons for over four decades but how were his audience to reconcile this with the man whose name only brought back images of the motormouth Genie from the Disney classic Aladdin or the rotund, cross-dressing housekeeper, Mrs Doubtfire, in the eponymous movie?
Williams often played a hope-giver in the direst of times?the irreverent military radio jockey, Adrian Cronauer, in Good Morning Vietnam, who, through his humour, keeps up the morale of the American soldiers posted in Saigon as war rages on; as Dr Hunter ?Patch? Adams, the clownish paediatrician, who helps terminally-ill children laugh through their pain in Patch Adams; as Dr Sean Maguire, the therapist who helps Matt Damon?s Will Hunting escape the hauntings of a childhood of abuse in Good Will Hunting. Very recently, he had turned to TV with The Crazy Ones, a comedy set in an ad-agency which his character headed. The man gave his fans a lifetime of laughs and warmth. Which is why it is so shocking, and heartbreaking, that he went the way he did.