From his rapid-fire stand-up riffs to his breakout role in Mork & Mindy and his powerful Academy Award-winning performance in Good Will Hunting, Robin Williams was a singularly innovative actor and comedian. He often came across as a man possessed, holding forth on culture, politics, and personal revelation -- all with mercurial, tongue-twisting intensity as he inhabited and shed one character after another. But as Dave Itzkoff shows in this biography, Williams's brilliance masked a deep well of conf licting emotions and self-doubt. In his comedy and in celebrated films such as Dead Poets Society; Good Morning, Vietnam; The Fisher King; Aladdin; and Mrs. Doubtfire he showcased his limitless gift for improvisation, bringing his characters to life and using humor to seek deeper truths. Itzkoff also shows how Williams struggled mightily with addiction and depression and with a debilitating condition at the end of his life that affected him in ways his fans never knew. Drawing on more than a hundred original interviews with family, friends, and colleagues, as well as extensive archival research, Robin is a fresh and original look at a performer whose work touched so many of our lives.