Remembering Robin Williams: His Life in Pictures ... Part 1

FUNNY BEGINNINGS
Born July 21, 1951, to a former model and a Ford Motor Company executive, Chicago native Robin Williams began his showbiz career inside his own home, where he'd make his mother laugh by doing impressions of his grandmother, according to the AP.

BEST IN CLASS
  By the '70s, he took that talent to New York City's prestigious Juilliard School. There, he befriended classmate Christopher Reeve (here with Williams at the 1979 People's Choice Awards). "I'd sit back and hope to catch the girls that were downstream," he later joked to PEOPLE.

PLANET HOLLYWOOD
Reaching for the stars took a literal turn when Williams portrayed Mork, an alien from Planet Ork, on Happy Days in 1978. His extraterrestrial performance earned him and costar Pam Dawber an ABC spin-off called Mork & Mindy, which ran from 1978 to 1982.

FIRST LOVE
Four months into his marriage to Valerie Velardi, a modern dance teacher, Williams found sudden fame in sitcom TV. The couple had one child together, Zachary, in 1983, before divorcing in 1988.

PARTY ANIMAL
  While starring on the TV hit, Williams developed a cocaine habit. "Most people get hyper on coke. It slowed me down," he later told PEOPLE in 1988. "It made me withdrawn. And I was crazy back then – working all day, partying all night. I needed an excuse not to talk." But the death of Saturday Night Live's John Belushi helped scare Williams sober in 1982 – he had spent hours with Belushi before the comic overdosed on heroin and cocaine.

CAUSE CELEBS
   Williams took his act to the road on multiple stand-up tours, including An Evening with Robin Williams (1982) and Robin Williams: At the Met. He also brought the laughs for a good cause: Beginning in 1986, he teamed up with Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal for the Comic Relief special, a star-studded HBO telethon benefiting the homeless. "There were no cell phones when we started. There were just phones in the old days," he joked to PEOPLE when the special returned in 2006 after a hiatus.

A CHANGE OF HEART"Right now I'm moving through my personal life like a hemophiliac in a razor factory," Williams said in 1988 amid marital struggles. The comedian found himself torn between wife Valerie and Marsha Garces, the couple's 20-something live-in nanny for son Zachary. They married in 1989 and had two children (Zelda Rae and Cody Alan) before divorcing in 2008 after 19 years of marriage.
 

COURTING OSCARWilliams's career took a serious turn in 1987 when he portrayed convention-defying Armed Forces Radio Service deejay Adrian Cronauer in the war comedy Good Morning, Vietnam. The performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, as well as a Golden Globe Award.

WORDS TO LIVE BY
"No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world," Williams stated in 1989's Dead Poets Society, a drama marked by his nuanced portrayal of an English teacher who dares to think outside the classroom. His performance as John Keating earned him another Oscar nod, as well as a Golden Globe nomination. 

NO DOUBT ABOUT IT
  Layers of prosthetics and a shiny gray wig turned Mrs. Doubtfire into a 1993 hit and transformed the actor into America's favorite nanny. In April 2014, it was reported that a sequel to the family classic is in development at Fox 2000.