Robin Williams

Robin Williams Net Worth 2025: Earnings, Biography & Career Highlights

Robin Williams was one of the most beloved American actors and comedians of his generation, renowned for his quick wit, improvisational skills, and a remarkable range of performances across film, television, and stand-up comedy. This article delves into Robin Williams’ net worth as of 2025 (including inflation-adjusted estimates), career milestones, personal life, philanthropy, and lasting legacy.

Personal Profile About Robin Williams

Age, Biography and Wiki

Williams began his career as a stand-up comedian before rising to fame on the sitcom Mork & Mindy. He became a household name with a prolific film career spanning decades, winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Good Will Hunting.

Occupation Stand-up Comedians
Date of Birth 21 July 1951
Age 74 Years
Birth Place Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Horoscope Cancer
Country U.S
Date of death 11 August, 2014
Died Place Paradise Cay, California, U.S.

Height, Weight & Measurements

Height 5 feet 8 inches
Weight 160 lbs
Body Measurements
Eye Color
Hair Color

Dating & Relationship Status

Williams was known for being a devoted father and husband, though his marriages faced public challenges, particularly due to the pressures of his career and personal struggles.

Luke's Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, on July 21, 1951. His father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams (1906–1987), was a senior executive in Ford's Lincoln-Mercury Division. His mother, Laurie McLaurin (1922–2001), was a former model from Jackson, Mississippi, whose great-grandfather was Mississippi senator and governor Anselm J. McLaurin. Williams had two older half-brothers: a paternal half-brother, Robert (also known as Todd), and a maternal half-brother, McLaurin. While his mother was a practitioner of Christian Science, Williams was raised in his father's Episcopal faith. During a television interview on Inside the Actors Studio in 2001, Williams credited his mother as an important early influence on his humor, and he tried to make her laugh to gain attention.

Williams attended public elementary school at Gorton Elementary School in Lake Forest and later Deer Path Junior High School. He described himself as a quiet child who did not overcome his shyness until becoming involved with his high school drama department, while friends recalled him as being very funny. In late 1963, when Williams was 12, his father was transferred to Detroit. The family lived in a 40-room farmhouse on 20 acre in suburban Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where Williams attended the private all-boys Detroit Country Day School. He excelled academically, served as class president, and was on the school's wrestling team, but was also bullied for his weight and would play at home by himself.

With both parents working, Williams was partly raised by the family's maid, who was his main companion. When Williams was 16, his father took early retirement and the family moved to Tiburon, California. Following their move, Williams attended Redwood High School in nearby Larkspur. Williams described the school as Gestalt, he went on to join the drama club becoming involved in theater, which first helped foster his interest in arts and entertainment. At the time of his graduation in 1969, he was voted "Most Likely Not to Succeed" and "Funniest" by his classmates. After high school graduation, Williams enrolled at Claremont Men's College in Claremont, California, to study political science; he dropped out to pursue acting. Williams studied theater for three years at the College of Marin, a community college in Kentfield, California. According to the College of Marin's drama professor, James Dunn, the depth of the young actor's talent became evident when Williams was cast in the musical Oliver! as Fagin. He often improvised during his time in the drama program, leaving cast members in hysterics. Dunn called his wife after one late rehearsal to tell her Williams "was going to be something special".

Their primary acting teacher was Michael Kahn, who was "equally baffled by this human dynamo". Williams already had a reputation for being funny, but Kahn criticized his antics as simple stand-up comedy. In a later production, Williams silenced his critics with his well-received performance as an old man in Tennessee Williams's Night of the Iguana. Reeve wrote, "He simply was the old man. I was astonished by his work and very grateful that fate had thrown us together." The two remained close friends until Reeve's death in 2004. Their friendship was like "brothers from another mother", according to Williams's son Zak.

Williams married actress Valerie Velardi in 1978, following a live-in relationship with comedian Elayne Boosler. Velardi and Williams met in 1976 while he was working as a bartender at a San Francisco tavern. Velardi and Williams were divorced in 1988.

While it was reported that Williams began an affair with Zachary's nanny, Marsha Garces, in 1986, Velardi stated in the 2018 documentary, Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, that the relationship with Garces began after the two had separated. On April 30, 1989, Williams married Garces, who was six months pregnant with their first child. They had two children, Zelda Rae (born 1989) and Cody Alan (born 1991). In March 2008, Garces filed for divorce from Williams, citing irreconcilable differences. Their divorce was finalized in 2010.

Williams and his second wife Marsha founded a philanthropic organization called the Windfall Foundation to raise money for many charities. In December 1999, he sang in French on the BBC-inspired music video of international celebrities doing a cover of The Rolling Stones single "It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It)" for the charity Children's Promise.

His publicist, Mara Buxbaum, commented that Williams had severe depression before his death. His wife, Susan Schneider, said that in the period before his death, Williams had been sober but was diagnosed with early-stage Parkinson's disease, which was information that he was "not yet ready to share publicly". An autopsy revealed that Williams had diffuse Lewy bodies (which had been misdiagnosed as Parkinson's), and this may have contributed to his depression.

Williams was found dead at age 63 in his home in Paradise Cay, California, on August 11, 2014. The final autopsy report, released that November, concluded that Williams's death was a suicide resulting from "asphyxia due to hanging". He had asphyxiated himself using a belt wrapped around a door handle. Neither alcohol nor illegal drugs were involved, and prescription drugs present in his body were at therapeutic levels. The report also noted that Williams had depression and anxiety. An examination of his brain tissue suggested that Williams had "diffuse Lewy body dementia". Describing the disease as "the terrorist inside my husband's brain", Schneider said that "however you look at it—the presence of Lewy bodies took his life", referring to his previous diagnosis of Parkinson's. She noted "how we as a culture don't have the vocabulary to discuss brain disease in the way we do about depression. Depression is a symptom of LBD and it's not about psychology – it's rooted in neurology. His brain was falling apart." Medical experts had earlier struggled to determine a cause, and had eventually diagnosed him with Parkinson's disease.

Following the announcement of Williams's death, many figures in the entertainment industry praised him on social media. Schneider said, "I lost my husband and my best friend, while the world lost one of its most beloved artists and beautiful human beings. I am utterly heartbroken." His daughter, Zelda Williams, responded to his death by saying that the "world is forever a little darker, less colorful and less full of laughter in his absence".

During a Playboy interview in 1992, Williams was asked whether he ever feared losing his balance between his work and his life. He replied, "There's that fear—if I felt like I was becoming not just dull but a rock, that I still couldn't speak, fire off or talk about things, if I'd start to worry or got too afraid to say something.... If I stop trying, I get afraid." While he attributed the recent suicide of novelist Jerzy Kosiński to his fear of losing his creativity and sharpness, Williams felt that he could overcome those risks. For that, he credited his father for strengthening his self-confidence, telling him to never be afraid of talking about subjects which were important to him.

Parents
Husband Valerie Velardi (m. 1978-1988) Marsha Garces (m. 1989-2010) Susan Schneider (m. 2011)
Sibling
Children

Net Worth and Salary

Mork's appearance proved so popular with viewers that it led to the spin-off television sitcom Mork & Mindy, which co-starred Pam Dawber, and ran from 1978 to 1982; the show was written to accommodate his extreme improvisations in dialogue and behavior. Although he portrayed the same character as in Happy Days, the series was set in the present in Boulder, Colorado, instead of the late 1950s in Milwaukee. Mork & Mindy at its peak had a weekly audience of sixty million and was credited with turning Williams into a "superstar". Among young people, the show was very popular because Williams became "a man and a child, buoyant, rubber-faced, an endless gusher of ideas", according to critic James Poniewozik. Mork became popular, featured on posters, coloring books, lunch-boxes, and other merchandise. Mork & Mindy was such a success in its first season that Williams appeared on the March 12, 1979, cover of Time magazine. The cover photo, taken by Michael Dressler in 1979, is said to have "[captured] his different sides: the funnyman mugging for the camera, and a sweet, more thoughtful pose that appears on a small TV he holds in his hands", according to Mary Forgione of the Los Angeles Times. This photo was installed in the National Portrait Gallery in the Smithsonian Institution shortly after Williams died to allow visitors to pay their respects. He also appeared on the cover of the August 23, 1979, issue of Rolling Stone, photographed by Richard Avedon.

Career, Business and Investments

Robin McLaurin Williams (July 21, 1951 – August 11, 2014) was an American actor and comedian known for his improvisational skills and the wide variety of characters he created on the spur of the moment and portrayed on film, in dramas and comedies alike, Williams is regarded as one of the greatest comedians of all time. He received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, five Grammy Awards, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. Williams was awarded the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2005.

During his career, Williams suffered substance abuse issues and instances of severe depression. He was found dead at his home in Paradise Cay, California, in August 2014, at age 63. His death was ruled a suicide. According to his widow, Williams had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, and had been experiencing depression, anxiety, and increasing paranoia. His autopsy found "diffuse Lewy body disease", and Lewy body dementia professionals said that his symptoms were consistent with dementia with Lewy bodies.

Williams began performing stand-up comedy in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1976. His first performance took place at the Holy City Zoo, a San Francisco comedy club where he worked his way up from tending bar. During the 1960s, San Francisco had been a hub for rock music, the hippie movement, drugs, and a sexual revolution. By the late 1970s, Williams played a leading role in what critic Gerald Nachman described as the city's "comedy renaissance". Reflecting on that era, Williams said that he found out about "drugs and happiness" during that period, adding that he saw "the best brains of my time turned to mud". Williams moved to Los Angeles and continued performing stand-up at clubs, including The Comedy Store. There, in 1977, he was seen by television producer George Schlatter, who asked him to appear on a revival of his show Laugh-In. The show aired later that year and marked Williams' television debut. That same year, he performed a show at the L.A. Improv for Home Box Office. Although the Laugh-In revival failed, it opened doors for Williams' television career; he continued performing stand-up at comedy clubs such as the Roxy to help keep his improvisational skills sharp. Williams also took his act overseas and performed at The Fighting Cocks in England.

Williams starred as the lead character in The World According to Garp (1982), which he noted "may have lacked a certain madness onscreen, but it had a great core". Critic Roger Ebert wrote of his performance, "Although Robin Williams plays Garp as a relatively plausible, sometimes ordinary person, the movie never seems bothered by the jarring contrast between his cheerful pluckiness and the anarchy around him." Williams continued with other smaller roles in less successful films, such as The Survivors (1983) and Club Paradise (1986), although he said these roles did not help advance his film career.

Williams's performances garnered various accolades, including an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Good Will Hunting; as well as two previous Academy Award nominations, for Dead Poets Society, and as a troubled homeless man in The Fisher King, respectively. Among the actors who helped Williams during his acting career, he credited Robert De Niro, from whom Williams learned the power of silence and economy of dialogue when acting. From Dustin Hoffman, with whom Williams co-starred in Hook, he learned to take on totally different character types, and to transform his characters by extreme preparation. Mike Medavoy, producer of Hook, told its director, Steven Spielberg, that he intentionally teamed up Hoffman and Williams for the film because he knew they wanted to work together, and that Williams welcomed the opportunity of working with Spielberg. Having Woody Allen, who directed him and Billy Crystal in Deconstructing Harry (1997), helped Williams. Allen knew that Crystal and Williams had often worked together on stage.

Williams's stand-up work was a consistent thread throughout his career, as seen by the success of his one-man show (and subsequent DVD), Robin Williams: Live on Broadway (2002). In 2004, Williams was voted 13th on Comedy Central's list of "100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time." Two years later, he was the Surprise Guest at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, and appeared on an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition that aired January 30. After a six-year hiatus, in August 2008, Williams announced a new 26-city tour, Weapons of Self-Destruction. The tour began at the end of September 2009, and concluded in New York on December 3, and was the subject of an HBO Special on December 8, 2009.

Fans of Williams created makeshift memorials at his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and at locations from his television and film career, such as the bench in Boston's Public Garden featured in Good Will Hunting; the Pacific Heights, San Francisco home used in Mrs. Doubtfire; the sign for Parrish Shoes in Keene, New Hampshire, where parts of Jumanji were filmed; and the Boulder, Colorado, home used for Mork & Mindy.

On September 9, 2014, PBS aired a one-hour special devoted to Williams's career, and on September 27, dozens of leading stars and celebrities held a tribute in San Francisco to celebrate his life and career. British heavy metal band Iron Maiden dedicated a song to Williams, titled "Tears of a Clown", on their 2015 album The Book of Souls. The song looks into his depression and suicide, and how he attempted to hide his condition from the public.

In 2018, HBO produced a documentary about his life and career. Directed by Marina Zenovich, the film Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind was also screened at the Sundance Film Festival. That same year, a mural of Robin Williams was created on Market Street in San Francisco. Work on a biography was begun by The New York Times writer David Itzkoff in 2014, and was published four years later, titled Robin.

Although Williams was first recognized as a stand-up comedian and television star, he became known for acting in film roles of substance and serious drama. Williams was considered a "national treasure" by many in the entertainment industry and by the public.

Williams said that, partly due to the stress of performing stand-up, he started using drugs and alcohol early in his career. He further said that he neither drank nor took drugs while on stage, but occasionally performed when hung over from the previous day. During the period when he was using cocaine, Williams said it made him paranoid when performing on stage.

Jonathan Winters was his "idol" early in life; Williams, aged eight, first saw him on television and paid him homage in interviews throughout his career. Williams was inspired by Winters's ingenuity, saying "that anything is possible, that anything is funny... He gave me the idea that it can be free-form, that you can go in and out of things pretty easily."

Throughout his career, Williams won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Good Will Hunting (1997). He also won six Golden Globe Awards, including Best Actor—Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his roles in Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), The Fisher King (1991), and Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), along with the Special Golden Globe Award for Vocal Work in a Motion Picture for his role Genie in Aladdin (1992), and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2005. Williams also received two Primetime Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and five Grammy Awards.

Social Network

Robin Williams was a private individual regarding social media; he passed away before the rise of Instagram and Twitter as mainstream platforms. However, his legacy remains strong online, with millions of fans discussing and celebrating his work across various platforms.

In 1973, Williams attained a full scholarship to the Juilliard School (Group 6, 1973–1976) in New York City. He was one of 20 students accepted into the freshman class, and Williams and Christopher Reeve were the only two accepted by John Houseman for the school's Advanced Program that year. Williams's classmates included William Hurt and Mandy Patinkin. According to biographer Jean Dorsinville, Franklyn Seales and Williams were roommates at Juilliard. Reeve recalled his first impression of Williams when they were new students at Juilliard: "He wore tie-dyed shirts with tracksuit bottoms and talked a mile a minute. I'd never seen so much energy contained in one person. He was like an untied balloon that had been inflated and immediately released. I watched in awe as he virtually caromed off the walls of the classrooms and hallways. To say that he was 'on' would be a major understatement."

David Letterman, who knew Williams for nearly 40 years, recalled first seeing him perform as a newcomer at The Comedy Store in Hollywood. Letterman, already an established comedian at the time, described Williams' arrival as "like a hurricane", saying that he thought to himself, "Holy crap, there goes my chance in show business". Williams' first credited film role was a minor part in the 1977 low-budget comedy Can I Do It... 'Til I Need Glasses?. However, his first starring performance was as the title character in Popeye (1980), in which Williams showcased the acting skills previously demonstrated in his television work. Accordingly, the film's commercial disappointment was not blamed on his performance.

Williams appeared opposite Steve Martin at Lincoln Center in an off-Broadway production of Waiting for Godot in 1988. Many of his subsequent roles were in comedies tinged with pathos, such as Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) and Patch Adams (1998). Looking over most of Williams's filmography, one writer was "struck by the breadth" and radical diversity of most of the roles Williams portrayed. In 1989, he played a private-school English teacher in Dead Poets Society, which included a final, emotional scene that some critics said "inspired a generation" and became a part of pop culture. Similarly, Williams's performance as a therapist in Good Will Hunting (1997) deeply affected even some real therapists. In Awakenings (1990), he plays a doctor modeled after Oliver Sacks, who wrote the book on which the film is based. Sacks later said the way the actor's mind worked was a "form of genius". In 1991, Williams played an adult Peter Pan in the film Hook, although he had said that he would have to lose 25 pounds for the role. Terry Gilliam, who directed Williams in two of his films, The Fisher King (1991) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), said in 1992 that Williams had the ability to "go from manic to mad to tender and vulnerable... [Williams had] the most unique mind on the planet. There's nobody like him out there."

"No. Cocaine—paranoid and impotent, what fun. There was no bit of me thinking, ooh, let's go back to that. Useless conversations until midnight, waking up at dawn feeling like a vampire on a day pass. No."

At the United Nations headquarters on August 12, Williams was celebrated during the opening of the International Youth Day. In the presence of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Assistant Secretary General Thomas Gass paid tribute to Williams by standing on the pulpit of the ECOSOC Chamber and quoting one of Keating's lines from Dead Poets Society: "Dare to look at things in a different way!". Several fans similarly paid tribute to Williams on social media with photo and video reenactments of Dead Poets Society's "O Captain! My Captain!" scene.

Shortly after Williams died, Disney Channel, Disney XD, and Disney Junior aired Aladdin commercial-free over the course of a week, with a dedicated drawing of the Genie at the end of each airing before the credits. In honor of his theater work, the lights of Broadway were darkened for the evening of August 14. That night, the cast of the Aladdin musical honored Williams by having the audience join them in a sing-along of "Friend Like Me", an Oscar-nominated song originally sung by Williams in the film Aladdin.

Williams created a signature free-form comedy persona so widely and uniquely identified that new comedians like Jim Carrey impersonated him, paving the way for the growing comedy scene that developed in San Francisco. Young comedians felt more liberated on stage by seeing his spontaneously diverse range: "One moment acting as a bright, mischievous child, then as a wise philosopher or alien from outer space". According to Judd Apatow, the eclectic performer's rapid-fire improvisational style was an inspiration as well as an influence for other comedians, but his talent was so extremely unusual no one else could possibly attempt to copy it.

Williams's film performances often influenced other actors, both in and out of the film industry. Director Chris Columbus, who directed him in Mrs. Doubtfire, says watching him work "was a magical and special privilege. His performances were unlike anything any of us had ever seen, they came from some spiritual and otherworldly place." Looking over most of Williams's filmography, Alyssa Rosenberg at The Washington Post was "struck by the breadth" and radical diversity of most of his roles, writing that "Williams helped us grow up".

Education

Williams and Reeve had a class in dialects taught by Edith Skinner, whom Reeve said was one of the world's leading voice and speech teachers. According to Reeve, Skinner was bewildered by Williams and his ability to instantly perform in many different accents.

During the summers of 1974 to 1976, Williams worked as a busboy at The Trident in Sausalito, California. He left Juilliard during his junior year in 1976, following Houseman's suggestion that the school had nothing more they could teach him. Gerald Freedman, another of his teachers at Juilliard, called Williams a "genius" and that the school's conservative and classical style of training did not suit him; to those who knew him, it came as no surprise that Williams left.

The Lewy Body Dementia Association (LBDA) clarified the distinction between the term used in the autopsy report, "diffuse Lewy body dementia", which is more commonly called "diffuse Lewy body disease", and refers to the underlying disease process—and the umbrella term, "Lewy body dementia"—which encompasses both Parkinson's disease dementia (PD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). According to LBDA spokesperson Dennis Dickson, "The report confirms he experienced depression, anxiety, and paranoia, which may occur in either Parkinson's disease or dementia with Lewy bodies.... In early PD, Lewy bodies are generally limited in distribution, but in DLB, the Lewy bodies are spread widely throughout the brain, as was the case with Robin Williams." Ian G. McKeith, professor and researcher of Lewy body dementias, commented that Williams's symptoms and autopsy findings were explained by DLB. Williams's body was cremated at Monte's Chapel of the Hills in San Anselmo, and his ashes were scattered over San Francisco Bay on August 21, 2014.

President Barack Obama released a statement on Williams's death: "Robin Williams was an airman, a doctor, a genie, a nanny, a president, a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan, and everything in between ... He arrived in our lives as an alien—but he ended up touching every element of the human spirit. He made us laugh. He made us cry. He gave his immeasurable talent freely and generously to those who needed it most—from our troops stationed abroad to the marginalized on our own streets."

Summary

Robin Williams’ net worth, estimated at $130 million at its peak (over $235 million in today’s dollars), reflected his immense success and popularity, while his estate at death—about $50 million—demonstrates the impact of personal and financial challenges. Despite these setbacks, Williams is remembered as one of the most influential entertainers of his era, celebrated for his talent, generosity, and enduring legacy in Hollywood and beyond.

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