Robin Williams is dead

Here's a really good analysis of possible motivations from the NYTimes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/13/business/media/busy-working-robin-williams-fought-demons.html?_r=0

Interesting.

Yea. We've seen video of him openly mentioning financial considerations.
It appears to have been on his mind.

I can remember the author of some internationally successful books
who lamented what he deemed to be his financial distress at the hands
of his ex-wife in 1988, who confided his suicidal ideation to me.
I argued against suicide. I gave him some financial support; not much.
He is still with us now. He has re-married and fathered 2 girls.
He is a very, very nice guy, a mental health care professional, retired.

Maybe it is possible that he left a note bemoaning financial embarrassment.
That might be a reason for the Sheriff's reticence qua notes.

If Robin had left no note, then it'd have been ez for the Sheriff
to have denied finding one, when asked -- which he has refused to do.

A zebra has more than 1 stripe. Robin showed us different personalities.
In retrospect, I regret my failure to have been more supportive,
as a member of the public, but when he raised his voice in obstreperous,
boisterous screams, I found that not to my taste. I averted my attention.
In contradistinction, I really liked his soft, gentle, thoughtful side.
He said that he was an actor first, a comedian second, in his youth,
because he cud not find work as an actor. I wonder whether he had
significant life insurance for his family, which is now available to them.
I dunno the law of California, but the NY rule of law was that after
2 years of paying premium, a life insurance policy became "incontestable"
by an insurance carrier, such that it had to pay suicide claims.

IF he really did commit suicide for that reason,
then it 'd be a lot sadder than it is.





David

Thank you for that link. It provided some insight, though we'll never know the depth of his pain. May he R.I.P.

Indeed, sure is sad though. I normally don't go in for this sort of thing when someone famous dies, but, I have always liked his movies and his style.

Ya, I wonder about that. His death is being talked about in places that dont normally go into celeb death. Something about Williams either touched a lot of people or did so deeply. I saw one theory that he touched an entire generation deeply with Aladdin. My own theory is that the tragedy story arc is compelling, this life long depression that was chasing a very funny guy, eventually getting him.

I wasn't aware of his struggles with depression, don't really watch a lot of interview shows. I just liked him, I mean, who didn't?

A Brit disc jockey is in hot water for criticising Williams by implying that people who kill themselves are selfish for not considering the hurt to their relatives they leave behind.
Obviously the DJ doesn't know that REAL depression is something much worse than just feeling down in the dumps.
Incidentally acting is a very stressful job because actors have to "become" the character they're playing, Heath Ledger said much the same thing before he killed himself, it was as if the dark side of the Joker character "possessed" him-

News article- Fans have been given insight into just how Heath Ledger became immersed into the dark world of the Joker.
While his official cause of death was an accidental overdose many have always believed the Australian actor struggled after he created his Batman villain.
Prior to his death he spoke to Empire Magazine saying he 'feared' the role but wanted to make it different.
'I sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, locked myself away, formed a little diary and experimented with voices..
'I ended up landing more in the realm of a psychopath..
'He’s just an absolute sociopath, a cold-blooded, mass-murdering clown.."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2334159/Inside-Heath-Ledgers-private-diary-Batman-stars-heartbroken-father-shares-personal-notes-dark-Joker-role.html

As I remember, children have done that,
without appearing to be stressed from it.

Yes, me and my mates often became Davy Crockett, Flash Gordon, Robin Hood etc when we played, but there was no danger because they were all great decent characters, but Ledger had to play the evil Joker in Batman and it got to him. (And in his earlier film Brokeback Mountain he had to play a homo, and before that he played the murderer Ned Kelly, so maybe he became a "demon-magnet")

News article about Ledger-

Did Heath Ledger’s stress at playing Joker cause overdose?
"He said in one of his last interviews that his mind was ‘racing’ and he took an Ambien tablet.
Speaking to the New York Times about his role as the Joker in the Dark Knight, the 28-year-old revealed: ‘I probably slept an average of two hours a night.
“I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted and my mind was still going.’
He said one pill had no effect and confessed he usually took a second to make himself pass out, only to wake an hour later with his ‘mind still racing’.
Police said they found the star in his bedroom naked with pills lying nearby just after 3pm Tuesday"
http://metro.co.uk/2008/01/23/did-heath-ledgers-stress-at-playing-joker-cause-overdose-649285/

I think this is why this celeb death is different.

Williams was extremely well liked, and very highly regarded, by several generations of fans, as well as by his co-workers and others in the entertainment industry. He had a unique and incomparable range of talents that had left their mark in television, movies, and more recently, on the Broadway stage, so his appeal, and ability to touch people, was very wide, and very enduring. And, on a personal level, he was universally described as a kind, generous, giving person, both in his work, as well as his philanthropic and humanitarian efforts. Everyone seems to have genuinely liked this man.

It is staggering to think that someone with that kind of success and acclaim, with a career still going strong, and the love and support of so many, and who was particularly known for bringing such laughter and joy to others, was so beset by his inner pain that he chose to end his life hanging from a belt jammed into a bedroom closet door. It leaves everyone wondering, "Why?" and there seems to be no quick or easy answer to that question. We'll likely never know why he chose to seek death now rather than wait for it to find him in the future.

But it is hard to believe that this man with the vitality and energy of a force of nature is gone, extinguished forever.


That Williams pulled down the curtain on his own life gives this particular celeb death a shock impact most others don't have.

Another actor who hung himself was David Carradine, he played a Shaolin monk in the longrunning 'Kung Fu' TV series, so maybe the stress of playing a nonchristian eventually got to him too.

I also think it sends us a message about how devastating depression is to the individual and the family and friends.

No matter how successful or loved the individual is, the person suffering is capable of hiding it from everybody. That's scary.

Yep...I agree...

Robin Williams on golf - with a youtube link to more..

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/robin-williams-game-golf?src=mp

When a dear friend of mine committed suicide, decades ago, I couldn't believe the unexpected anger I felt toward her for doing something so horrible to her children--they were devastated by the intentional manner of her death, and they remained devastated for a very long time. Dealing with the aftermath of a suicide is very different than the grief that follows a natural death, or even an accidental death. Watching the effects on her children, it was difficult not to see her suicide as not only selfish, but also an act of hostility.

Robin Williams apparently had a lifelong fear of abandonment, but, in the end, he was the one who did the abandoning.

One consequence of severe depression may be that it smothers out all other feelings and rational options. It isolates and encapsulates a person. It really shouldn't be surprising that, without any will to go on living, someone who chooses suicide may not be thinking entirely rationally, including about how their death will affect their loved ones.

What "stress"?????
He was involved in auto-erotica at the time.

Williams always seemed very highly-strung anyway, so maybe he just didn't know how to relax and it eventually caught up with him

I wonder if he did it for life insurance
for his family.

Suicide often invalidates a claim.