Comedy / Film & TV
Robin Williams
1951–2014 · comedian, actor
Oscar-winning comic genius who spent his early teens in Bloomfield Hills, where his father was a Ford executive, and attended Detroit Country Day School.
- Born
Chicago, Illinois- Died
Paradise Cay, California
aged 63- Birth name
- Robin McLaurin Williams
- Detroit years
- 1963–1968
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Robin Williams was born in Chicago, and in late 1963, when he was twelve, his family moved to metro Detroit after his father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams, an executive in Ford's Lincoln-Mercury division, was transferred there. They lived in a large farmhouse on some twenty acres in Bloomfield Hills, and Robin attended Detroit Country Day School, then an all-boys private school. There he did well in class, served as class president and joined the wrestling team, though he was also bullied; he later described himself as a shy, lonely boy who entertained himself with thousands of toy soldiers. When he was sixteen his father took early retirement and the family moved to Tiburon, California, where the high-school drama club set him on his path. His manic improvisation made him a star in Mork & Mindy, and he won an Academy Award for Good Will Hunting (1997).
Highlights
- Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Good Will Hunting (1997)
- Mork in Mork & Mindy (1978–1982)
- Oscar nominations for Good Morning, Vietnam, Dead Poets Society and The Fisher King
- Voice of the Genie in Disney's Aladdin (1992)
- Attended Detroit Country Day School while his father worked for Ford
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · 1963–1967
Detroit Country Day School
Private school founded in 1914 where Williams was class president and a wrestler; he left before graduating when the family moved to California.