4VF News – Daily News Channel

The apparent suicide of Oscar-winning actor and comedian Robin Williams has shocked the world, but sadly, he is one of many celebrities to have gone too soon.

Heath Ledger
The Australian-born star of blockbuster hits A Knight’s Tale, Brokeback Mountain and The Dark Knight died in 2008 from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs. He was 28 years old. He left behind a daughter, Matilda, whom he had with actress Michelle Williams. He was awarded a posthumous Oscar for his performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman
After many years battling drug addiction, the critically acclaimed actor died of an accidental drug overdose in February this year. The 46-year-old was found in his bathroom with a syringe in his arm and 65 full bags of heroin in the apartment. He had three young children with long term partner Mimi O’Donnell.

Whitney Houston
On the eve of the 2012 Grammy Awards, the 48-year-old singer was found slumped unconscious in the bathtub at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. She was supposed to have attended Clive Davis’ pre-Grammy party. The coroner ruled the death to be an accidental drowning, with cocaine use and heart disease contributing factors. She left behind a daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, her only child with husband Bobby Brown.

Brittany Murphy
The Clueless and 8 Mile actress collapsed in her bathroom in 2009 and died shortly after being taken to hospital at age 32. Her husband, Simon Monjack, died a year later. While a coroner ruled the causes of the pair’s deaths to be pneumonia and anaemia, there was speculation they had been killed by toxic mold in their home, and another theory suggested they were deliberately poisoned.

Paul Walker
The Fast and the Furious star died in a car crash caused by speed in November last year. Walker was a passenger in the car, which was being driven by his friend. Fast & Furious 7, which Walker had been in the middle of filming at the time of his death, will screen in April next year and will mark his final onscreen appearance. He was 40 years old.

Cory Monteith
Best known for his role as the singing jock Finn Hudson on Glee, fans of the 31-year-old were shocked when news of his death broke in July last year. Despite being known for his clean cut image, the Canadian actor had struggled with substance abuse from a young age. He died in a Vancouver hotel room from an accidental overdose of heroin mixed with alcohol. His onscreen and off-screen girlfriend Lea Michele was left devastated by his death.

Amy Winehouse
The English singer died of alcohol poisoning in 2011 after years of substance abuse, which inspired her 2006 hit single Rehab. Her bodyguard called an ambulance when he discovered her lying on her bed, not breathing. She was pronounced dead at the scene, and became a member of the “27 Club” – musicians who died at the age of 27.

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James Gandolfini
Best known on TV as Tony Soprano, the 51-year-old Emmy award-winner died in June last year of a heart attack. He had been on holiday in Rome and was found unconscious on the bathroom floor of his hotel by his 13-year-old son Michael. He also had a baby daughter, Liliana, to second wife Deborah Lin.

Peaches Geldof
Bob Geldof’s daughter was found dead at the age 25 in her Kent home in April this year. The cause of her death was the same as her mother, Paula Yates, who died in 2000 – a heroin overdose. She left behind two young sons, Astala and Phaedra, and husband Thomas Cohen.

Michael Jackson
The King of Pop died in 2009 at the age of 50. His personal physician, Conrad Murray, said he had entered Jackson’s room and found he was not breathing. After trying unsuccessfully to revive him, he got security to call 911. The coroner ruled Jackson’s death as a homicide due to a lethal cocktail of prescription drugs. Murray served a two-year jail sentence for administering the drugs.

– Stuff

There is a common belief that comedians are funny to escape their sadness; that often, behind the jokes, pratfalls and silly voices, there hides a depressed, tortured clown, squeezing laughs from audiences in an attempt to evade crippling melancholia.

This stereotype, which may have its roots in commedia dell’arte’s tear-faced Pierrot, is not, of course, true of every comic. And not every comic who identifies as having some form of mental illness is a tortured artist.

But ask a comedian if mental illness can play a role in their work and the answer is ”yes”. Or ”yes” put in a much funnier way.

Rhys Nicholson, a Sydney-based comedian who is outspoken about his depression and eating disorder, believes mental health issues are widespread in the comedy community.

”It’s a pretty big generalisation, but I’ve definitely found it to have some truth,” he says. ”Anxiety and depression are big ones. Substance problems are big, whether they know it or not. There’s a running joke that, well, we’re all broken people.

Beyond a joke: Fiona O’Loughlin has suffered from bouts of depression.

”Of course, I know a great many funny people who are very well-rounded, particularly fine people. It’s like saying that all lawyers are d—s. There are some nice lawyers. But, on the whole, most of them are bad people.”

Nicholson’s comedy, which has garnered widespread critical acclaim since he began performing five years ago, is explicit, dark, confessional stuff.

His graphic insights into sex, religion, politics and mental health issues make arrestingly frank comedy. His last show,

It’s the heartbreaking image Robin Williams posted three weeks before he took his own life.

As the shockwave spreads around the world from his death, many are turning to his social accounts to get an insight into what the man valued most.

Police in Marin County, California, today released a statement

Kiwi filmmaker Vincent Ward has paid tribute to his friend Robin Williams, describing the Oscar-winning comedian as a “gentle man, with a wild wit”.

Williams, 63, was found dead at his Californian home at 12.02pm on Monday (NZT 7.02am Tuesday) after an apparent suicide.

The actor first visited New Zealand in 1999 for a screening of the film Bicentennial Man, but made his first visit to Christchurch in November 2010 – shortly after Canterbury’s devastating September earthquake – to perform his “Weapons of Self Destruction” stand-up comedy show.

He donated all proceeds from that show to the city’s rebuild – half to the Red Cross and half to the Mayoral fund.

“It is devastating what has happened in Christchurch, but from what I have learnt, the people there are incredibly resilient,” Williams said at the time.

“I hope this donation will go some way to helping the extensive rebuilding effort in the city.”

Williams had a long-standing connection with New Zealand following his collaboration with Kiwi filmmaker Vincent Ward on the 1998 film What Dreams May Come.

The movie won an Oscar for best visual effects and became one of Ward’s biggest hits.

Ward today remembered his friend’s “extraordinary talent and wicked humour”.

“A gentle man, with a wild wit that comes from a place of both loneliness and affinity with other humans and their and his apparent absurdity, he was most of all a friend and I will miss him dearly.”

Ward, a University of Canterbury adjunct professor, said Williams joked with all the extras during long winter nights filming What Dreams May Come.

“If you have worked with him you know one thing; what a wonderful, extraordinary and kind man he was.

“[He] would keep all of us jollied along, not for his own sake but for all of us.”

Williams later helped Ward raise money for a Shanghai Biennale art project by encouraging people to donate towards the $100,000 needed for the multi-media display.

“It is unusual for someone of that fame to lend their name in the support of a personal project,” Ward said.

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– The Press

OPINION:

Meeting Robin Williams about a year ago was an “Oh my God” moment for columnist Michele A’Court. Here’s what she wrote about the encounter:

Last week I met

The world lost one of it funniest and most versatile actors today with the death of Robin Williams.

For more than 30 years he graced the big screen with roles ranging from an animated Genie to a serial killer.

Williams had the poise and talent to be successful across a wide range of genres. From animated classics and kids movies to gritty, dark dramas.

Here is our top 10 list of his best movies, although notable mentions must go to Patch Adams, Awakenings and countless other films – such was Williams’ acting talent.

1. Good Will Hunting (1997):

As the world reels from the loss of comedic legend Robin Williams, many are turning to his social accounts to get an insight into what the man valued most.

Williams’ final public words were issued via Twitter and Instagram (see below) with a post shared three weeks ago for his only daughter’s 25th birthday.

#tbt and Happy Birthday to Ms. Zelda Rae Williams! Quarter of a century old today but always my… http://t.co/qlsWIu429e

— Robin Williams (@robinwilliams) July 31, 2014

The photo shows a far younger Williams gazing pensively at the camera, with toddler Zelda Rae sitting on his chest.

The father of three’s

All Black legend Jonah Lomu has tweeted a farewell to his friend Robin Williams, the comedian and film star found dead in California today.

@robinwilliams rest in peace Till we meet again my friend Our hearts go out to the “Williams Family” Lots of Love Jonah&NadeneLomu

— JONAH TALI LOMU (@JONAHTALILOMU) August 11, 2014

Williams will be especially mourned in New Zealand, where he had friends in Lomu and actor Sam Neill.

Williams, who visited New Zealand in 1999, was a friend of Lomu, and co-starred with New Zealander Sam Neill in the movie Bicentennial Man.

He visited both friends when he came to New Zealand in 1999 to promote that movie, bringing wife Marsha and children Cody and Zelda along for the 11-day ride.

He had a real Kiwi adventure on his first trip to this country, planning mountain -biking, fly fishing and beach blobbing.
Christmas was spent in the South Island, where the family intended to visit Neill at his Queenstown vineyard.

Williams and Lomu met in San Francisco in 1998.

California police today released a statement saying the 63-year-old was pronounced dead at his home at 12.02pm local time.

The sheriff’s office said a preliminary investigation shows the cause of death to be a suicide due to asphyxia.

Neither Lomu nor Neill could be immediately reached today.

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– Stuff

Robin Williams, the Academy Award winner and comic supernova whose explosions of pop culture riffs and impressions dazzled audiences for decades and made him a gleamy-eyed laureate for the Information Age, died Monday in an apparent suicide. He was 63.

Williams was pronounced dead at his home in California on Monday, according to the sheriff’s office in Marin County, north of San Francisco. The sheriff’s office said a preliminary investigation shows the cause of death to be a suicide due to asphyxia.

“This morning, I lost my husband and my best friend, while the world lost one of its most beloved artists and beautiful human beings. I am utterly heartbroken,” said Williams’ wife, Susan Schneider.

“On behalf of Robin’s family, we are asking for privacy during our time of profound grief. As he is remembered, it is our hope the focus will not be on Robin’s death, but on the countless moments of joy and laughter he gave to millions,”
Williams had been battling severe depression recently, said Mara Buxbaum, his press representative.

From his breakthrough in the late 1970s as the alien in the hit TV show Mork and Mindy, through his standup act and such films as Good Morning, Vietnam, the short, barrel-chested Williams ranted and shouted as if just sprung from solitary confinement. Loud, fast, manic, he parodied everyone from John Wayne to Keith Richards, impersonating a Russian immigrant as easily as a pack of Nazi attack dogs.

He was a riot in drag in Mrs. Doubtfire, or as a cartoon genie in Aladdin. He won his Academy Award in a rare, but equally intense dramatic role, as a teacher in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting.

He was no less on fire in interviews. During a 1989 chat with The Associated Press, he could barely stay seated in his hotel room, or even mention the film he was supposed to promote, as he free-associated about comedy and the cosmos.

“There’s an Ice Age coming,” he said. “But the good news is there’ll be daiquiris for everyone and the Ice Capades will be everywhere. The lobster will keep for at least 100 years, that’s the good news. The Swanson dinners will last a whole millennium. The bad news is the house will basically be in Arkansas.”

Following Williams on stage, Billy Crystal once observed, was like trying to top the Civil War. In a 1993 interview with the AP, Williams recalled an appearance early in his career on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.Bob Hope was also there.

“It was interesting,” Williams said. “He was supposed to go on before me and I was supposed to follow him, and I had to go on before him because he was late. I don’t think that made him happy. I don’t think he was angry, but I don’t think he was pleased.

“I had been on the road and I came out, you know, gassed, and I killed and had a great time. Hope comes out and Johnny leans over and says, ‘Robin Williams, isn’t he funny’ Hope says, ‘Yeah, he’s wild. But you know, Johnny, it’s great to be back here with you.”‘

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In 1992, Carson chose Williams and Bette Midler as his final guests.

Like so many funnymen, he had serious ambitions, winning his Oscar for his portrayal of an empathetic therapist in Good Will Hunting. He also played for tears in Awakenings, Dead Poets Society and What Dreams May Come, something that led New York Times critic Stephen Holden to once say he dreaded seeing the actor’s “Humpty Dumpty grin and crinkly moist eyes.”

Williams also won three Golden Globes, for Good Morning, Vietnam, ‘Mrs. Doubtfire and The Fisher King.

His other film credits included Robert Altman’s Popeye (a box office bomb), Paul Mazursky’s Moscow on the Hudson, Steven Spielberg’s Hook and Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry. On stage, Williams joined fellow comedian Steve Martin in a 1988 Broadway revival of Waiting for Godot.

“I dread the word ‘art,”‘ Williams told the AP in 1989. “That’s what we used to do every night before we’d go on with Waiting for Godot. We’d go, ‘No art. Art dies tonight.’ We’d try to give it a life, instead of making Godot so serious. It’s cosmic vaudeville staged by the Marquis de Sade.”

His personal life was often short on laughter. He had acknowledged drug and alcohol problems in the 1970s and ’80s and was among the last to see John Belushi before the Saturday Night Live star died of a drug overdose in 1982.

Williams announced in recent years that he was again drinking but rebounded well enough to joke about it during his recent tour. “I went to rehab in wine country,” he said, “to keep my options open.”

Born in Chicago in 1951, Williams would remember himself as a shy kid who got some early laughs from his mother – by mimicking his grandmother. He opened up more in high school when he joined the drama club and he was accepted into the Juilliard Academy, where he had several classes in which he and Christopher Reeve were the only students and John Houseman was the teacher.

Encouraged by Houseman to pursue comedy, Williams identified with the wildest and angriest of performers: Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin. Their acts were not warm and lovable. They were just being themselves.

“You look at the world and see how scary it can be sometimes and still try to deal with the fear,” he told the AP in 1989. “Comedy can deal with the fear and still not paralyse you or tell you that it’s going away. You say, OK, you got certain choices here, you can laugh at them and then once you’ve laughed at them and you have expunged the demon, now you can deal with them. That’s what I do when I do my act.”

He unveiled Mork, the alien from the planet Ork, in an appearance on Happy Days, and was granted his own series, which ran from 1978-82.

In subsequent years, Williams often returned to television – for appearances on Saturday Night Live, for Friends,for comedy specials and for American Idol, where in 2008 he pretended to be a Russian idol who belts out a tuneless, indecipherable My Way.

Williams also could handle a script, when he felt like it, and also think on his feet. He ad-libbed in many of his films and was just as quick in person. During a media tour for Awakenings, when director Penny Marshall mistakenly described the film as being set in a “menstrual hospital,” instead of “mental hospital,” Williams quickly stepped in and joked, “It’s a period piece.”

Winner of a Grammy in 2003 for best spoken comedy album, Robin Williams – Live 2002, he once likened his act to the daily jogs he took across the Golden Gate Bridge. There were times he would look over the edge, one side of him pulling back in fear, the other insisting he could fly.

“You have an internal critic, an internal drive that says, ‘OK, you can do more.’ Maybe that’s what keeps you going,” Williams said. “Maybe that’s a demon. … Some people say, ‘It’s a muse.’ No, it’s not a muse! It’s a demon! DO IT YOU BASTARD!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! THE LITTLE DEMON!!”

– AP