Robin Williams - When the Laughter Stops 1951-2014 by Emily Herbert

Juilliard,’ he told
Time Warner Cable News.
‘He was not a very good fit for a conservative, classical training program, but we recognized his talent and he was a good sport about it. No one was surprised when he left school before he graduated and became what he became. I am so sorry we have lost him, that it came to this. He had so much to say about the world we live in. Perhaps it all got to him. I don’t know.’
    Good sport? This would certainly imply that his departure was not entirely of his own choosing but an inability to control his own sense of anarchy, plus the fact that he hadto turn every performance into a comic turn was, again, the sign of an actual need within him. He himself once admitted that he suffered from ‘Love Me’ syndrome and there it was, manifesting itself again.
    Robert M. Beseda also hinted that Williams’ temperament was simply unsuited to formal study. ‘He was a great mimic – he could mimic all the teachers like dead on and maybe they didn’t like that,’ he told
News Piedmont.
It was certainly one of life’s ironies that very many students who went on to study at The Juilliard cited Robin Williams as one of their heroes and one of the reasons they were inspired to act. It also implied that he could be somewhat tactless in challenging the authority figures. And the authority figures didn’t like that.
    A third version of events has since emerged – it must be said a considerably later one and one that, perhaps, resembles some face saving – on the part of The Juilliard. It has been said that none other than John Houseman suggested Williams should leave on the grounds that there was nothing more The Juilliard could teach him and so he might as well start earning his comedy credential straight away. This doesn’t entirely ring true – The Juilliard is the sort of place that always believes it can teach people something more. But Williams, uncharacteristically, remained silent. Clearly he never felt the need to give his own side of the story, preferring to let it rest.
    The actor James Marsters, who appeared as Spike in the TV series
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
(1997–2003) and whoalso left The Juilliard early, gave another insight. ‘The joke about Juilliard is the only actors that end up working are the ones that get kicked out,’ he told
Mediatainement Online
in 2001. ‘Robin Williams, John Hurt – the list is endless of people who were told they would never be actors, that they should get out of the business before they become bitter. Juilliard is a heavily regimented acting program and if you have a spirit which is individual, they will try and kick that out of you. And my opinion is that my instincts as an actor are the only thing I have to offer and I wouldn’t let them take that away from me. Ah… so it’s very sweet. I don’t want to put down Juilliard too much except to say it was not the right program for me at all and we both realized it.’
    It wasn’t the right program for Robin either, not that it mattered much in the longer term. However, he clearly harboured no ill will because in later years he funded other aspiring students to attend The Juilliard who would not otherwise have been able to do so. Jessica Chastain was one such beneficiary. ‘I’m the first person in my family to go to college,’ she told
Interview
magazine in 2011. ‘We didn’t have a lot of money, and Juilliard is a pretty expensive school. Robin Williams is a very generous Juilliard alumnus, and gives a scholarship every two years to a student, and it pays for everything, and I got it. I still haven’t gotten to meet him.’
    Understandably, in the wake of his death she was keen to pay tribute. ‘Robin Williams changed my life,’ she said.‘He was a great actor and a generous person. Through a scholarship, he made it possible for me to graduate college. His generous spirit will forever inspire me to support others as he supported me. He will forever be missed.’
    In later