Actor, comedian. Born on July 21, 1952, in Chicago, Illinois, educated at Claremont Men's College, California, College of Marin, California, Julliard (drama). Whimsical, highly charged screen lead. Son of Ford Motor Company executive in Detroit, he trained on the West Coast as a stand-up comic and in New York under John Houseman, gaining early fame as the innocent, wisecracking extraterrestrial Mork from Ork on the TV sitcom Happy Days. His role was parlayed into a popular spinoff, Mork and Mindy, exposure from which led to a film career. However, his uncanny improvisational skills did not find an adequate film showcase until the mid-80s, when he portrayed the iconoclastic disk jockey Adrian Cronauer in Good Morning, Vietnam.
Later films, notably Dead Poets Society and The Fisher King, have allowed him to further extend his dramatic range, imbuing his guileless expressionism with a search for larger meaning.
Williams was nominated for an Academy Award for Good Morning, Vietnam and Dead Poets Society. He is divorced from his first wife and is married to his child's former nanny, Marsha Garces, with whom he formed a production company in the 90s. Since the 80s, he, Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg have teamed to offer the Comic Relief fundraising events for the homeless.
