There is a lot happening behind the eyes of Robin Williams. The public persona is exactly what you would expect – he’s upbeat, there are voices and jokes and rapid-fire back-and-forth conversations between fictitious characters he’s just invented.
But behind the eyes of the 60-year-old there is a sense that he is going through the motions, singing for his supper in a manner to which he has become accustomed over nearly 35 years in show business. Or else it’s a pretty effective interview technique. A way of making people feel as if they’ve got a piece of you but when he leaves the room you realise he has given little of himself.
What he does say is perhaps somewhat surprising. Exhaustion is a big theme. His new marriage (his third) to artist Susan Schneider, less than one month old, is exhausting. Being expected to be “on” for people all the time is exhausting. Stand-up comedy is exhausting.
It gives the impression that at times Williams feels like he is a hamster on a wheel struggling to get off. Clearly the affection towards him from the public brings with it its own problems. “A woman came up to me in an airport once and said: ‘Be zany’,” he says. “It’s like coming up to Baryshnikov and going: ‘Dance, f***er’.”
Williams has come across as being bigger than life from the moment he first made an impact in the TV series Mork and Mindy. Good Morning Vietnam earned him an Oscar nomination, as did his performances in Dead Poets Society and The Fisher King. It was a case of fourth time lucky, then, when his portrayal of psychologist Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting finally won him an Oscar in 1998.
However the only really bona fide success of the past five years was voicing characters in the Oscar-winning animation Happy Feet, which perhaps explains why he seems so upbeat to be here talking about his part in the sequel.
Barely a week goes by these days without some new animated extravaganza hitting the cinemas voiced by stars of film, TV and comedy. They all have Williams to thank, for it was his role in Aladdin in 1992 that paved the way for high-profile comedians and actors to voice characters in animated movies.
“I think it helped the idea of using comedians in animations,” Williams says, modestly. “It began the idea of bringing a comic in and animating them.”
Animation holds a big place in Williams’ heart. As a child it was the old Looney Toons cartoons which he began to try and mimic. “I’m a big follower of the Fudd,” he says. “Elmer Fudd to me was the Holy Grail.”
Mimicking Fudd gave the young Williams a taste for performance, which he soon turned on his own family.
“The first time I did a voice other than my own was my grandmother for my mother. And my mother would say: ‘That’s very funny, now stop’.”
It hasn’t always been appreciated, not least by his children, of whom he has three – a son, Zach, from his first marriage to actress Valerie Velardi and a daughter Zelda and a son Cody from his second marriage to Marcha Garces, a 19-year union which ended in 2008.
“Years ago I used to read stories to my daughter and I would do all the voices and my daughter said to me: ‘Just read the story’.”
I wonder are they ever embarrassed by their dad’s antics? “Embarrassed? I don’t know. They know me from years ago. I would say it paid for the house. Don’t be ashamed. They know it’s my day job.”
It’s a day job that has taken Williams to the brink at times. He was part of the hell-raising group of comics who burst onto the scene in the Seventies and was a close friend of John Belushi. He has said previously that Belushi’s death from a drug overdose in 1982 was a “wake-up call”. Williams spent the next 20 years sober before starting drinking again in 2002 while filming in Alaska. In 2006 he quit drinking again and has remained sober since.
These days, he says, life is sedate and he is certainly a lot different from his slightly manic public persona.
He married Schneider last month and is clearly still glowing. “She’s incredible,” he says. “It’s exhausting. It’s such a gift. For me I’m just blessed. It feels so right.”
Two years ago Williams underwent open-heart surgery to replace his aortic valve. “Life is slower now, a little bit quieter,” he says. “I just don’t do things as fast. But having a new valve is great. I have a cow valve, which is wonderful. I can crap standing up.”
The year before his heart surgery he returned to the stand-up circuit after a six-year gap with a show titled Weapons of Self Destruction. He clearly loves stand-up but it’s an arena in which he has to tread with caution. “That’s where you have to be careful with the heart,” he says. “Do you have the energy and stamina to do it?”
But for now he’s happy in Happy Feet 2. And why not? It takes him back to the days of Elmer Fudd while at the same time transmitting an environmental message he believes passionately in.
“For me it’s huge given that I live in San Francisco at sea level. If the ocean rises even a foot I’m screwed. George Carlin used to say this best. The idea of saving the planet? The planet is going to go on fine without us. It’s us that are in danger. We’re the ones that could go. So I think if the film gives anything on that level to the idea of working together, then it’s a good message.”
Happy Feet 2 is now showing nationwide. – Sunday Independent