Robin Williams, the comedian who evolved into the surprisingly nuanced, Academy Award-winning actor, imbuing his performances with wild inventiveness and a kind of manic energy, died on Monday at his home in Tiburon, Calif., north of San Francisco. He was 63. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The Marin County sheriff’s office said in a statement that it “suspects the death to be a suicide due to asphyxia.” An investigation was underway. 
 
 The statement said that the office received a 911 call at 11:55 a.m. Pacific time, saying that a man had been found “unconscious and not breathing inside his residence.” Emergency personnel sent to the scene identified him as Mr. Williams and pronounced him dead at 12:02 p.m. 
 
 Mr. Williams’s publicist, Mara Buxbaum, said in a statement that Mr. Williams “has been battling severe depression.” 
 
 His wife, Susan Schneider, said in a statement, “This morning, I lost my husband and my best friend, while the world lost one of its most beloved artists and beautiful human beings.” She added: “As he is remembered, it is our hope the focus will not be on Robin’s death, but on the countless moments of joy and laughter he gave to millions.” 
 
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 The privileged son of a Detroit auto executive who grew up chubby and lonesome, playing by himself with 2,000 toy soldiers in an empty room of a suburban mansion, Mr. Williams, as a boy, hardly fit the stereotype of someone who would grow to become a brainy comedian, or a goofy one, but he was both. Onstage he was known for ricochet riffs on politics, social issues and cultural matters both high and low; tales of drug and alcohol abuse; lewd commentaries on relations between the sexes; and lightning-like improvisations on anything an audience member might toss at him. His gigs were always rife with frenetic, spot-on impersonations that included Hollywood stars, presidents, princes, prime ministers, popes and anonymous citizens of the world. His irreverence was legendary and uncurtailable. 
 
 “Chuck, Cam, great to see you,” he once called out from a London stage at Charles, Prince of Wales, and his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall. “Yo yo, wussup Wales, House of Windsor, keepin’ it real!” 
 
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 And yet he never seemed to offend. 
 
 Almost from the moment that he first uttered the greeting “Nanoo, nanoo” as Mork from Ork, an alien who befriends a wholesome young Colorado woman (Pam Dawber), on the sitcom “Mork and Mindy,” Mr. Williams was a comedy celebrity. “Mork and Mindy” made its debut on ABC in September 1978, and within two weeks had reached No. 7 in the Nielsen ratings. By the spring of 1979, 60 million viewers were tuning in to “Mork and Mindy” each week to watch Mr. Williams drink water through his finger, stand on his head when told to sit down, speak gibberish words like “shazbot” and “nimnul” that came to have meaning when he used them, and misinterpret, in startlingly literal fashion, the ordinary idioms of modern life. 
 
 He went on to earn Academy Award nominations for his roles in films like “Good Morning, Vietnam,” in which he played a loquacious radio D.J.; “Dead Poets Society,” playing a mentor to students in need of inspiration; and “The Fisher King,” as a homeless man whose life has been struck by tragedy. He won an Oscar in 1998 for “Good Will Hunting,” playing a therapist who works with a troubled prodigy played by Matt Damon. 
 
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 In a statement, President Obama said of Mr. Williams, “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.” 
 
 Robin McLaurin Williams was born in Chicago on July 21, 1951, and was raised in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., and Marin County. He studied acting at the Juilliard School. 
 
 He is survived by a son, Zak, from his marriage to Valerie Velardi, and a daughter, Zelda, and a son, Cody, from his marriage to Marsha Garces. 
 
 Beginning with roles in the 1977 sex farce “Can I Do It ‘Til I Need Glasses?” and “The Richard Pryor Show,” a variety series hosted by one of his comedy mentors, Mr. Williams rapidly ascended the entertainment industry’s ladder. 
 
 Soon after “Mork and Mindy” made him a star, Mr. Williams graduated into movie roles that included the title characters in “Popeye,” Robert Altman’s 1980 live-action musical about that spinach-gulping cartoon sailor, and “The World According to Garp,” the director George Roy Hill’s 1982 adaptation of the John Irving novel. 
 
 He also continued to appear in raucous stand-up comedy specials like “Robin Williams: An Evening at the Met,” which showcased his garrulous performance style and his indefatigable ability to free-associate without the apparent benefit of prepared material. Alongside his friends and fellow actors Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg, Mr. Williams appeared in an annual series of HBO telethons for Comic Relief, a charity organization that helps homeless people and others in need. 
 
 Mr. Williams’s acting career reached a new height in 1987 with his performance in Barry Levinson’s film “Good Morning, Vietnam,” in which he played Adrian Cronauer, a nonconformist Armed Forces Radio host working in Saigon in the 1960s. It earned Mr. Williams his first Oscar nomination. He earned another, two years later, for “Dead Poets Society,” directed by Peter Weir and released in 1989, in which he played an unconventional English teacher at a 1950s boarding school who inspires his students to tear up their textbooks and seize the day. (Or, as Mr. Williams’s character famously put it in the original Latin, “Carpe diem.”) 
 
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 In dozens of film roles that followed, Mr. Williams could be warm and zany, whether providing the voice of an irrepressible magic genie in “Aladdin,” the 1992 animated Walt Disney feature, or playing a man who cross-dresses as a British housekeeper in “Mrs. Doubtfire,” a 1993 family comedy, or a doctor struggling to treat patients with an unknown neurological malady in “Awakenings,” the 1990 Penny Marshall drama adapted from the Oliver Sacks memoir. 
 
 Some of Mr. Williams’s performances were criticized for a mawkish sentimentality, like “Patch Adams,” a 1998 film that once again cast him as a good-hearted doctor, and “Bicentennial Man,” a 1999 science-fiction feature in which he played an android. 
 
 But Mr. Williams continued to keep audiences guessing. In addition to his Oscar-winning role in “Good Will Hunting,” which saw him play a gently humorous therapist, his résumé included roles as a villainous crime writer in “Insomnia,” Christopher Nolan’s 2002 thriller; Teddy Roosevelt in the “Night at the Museum” movies; and Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 2013 drama “Lee Daniels’ The Butler.” 
 
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 Mr. Williams made his acting debut on Broadway in 2011 in “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” a play written by Rajiv Joseph and set amid the American invasion of Iraq. (He had starred with Steve Martin in an Off Broadway production of “Waiting for Godot” in 1988.) In 2013, Mr. Williams returned to series television in “The Crazy Ones,” a CBS comedy that cast him as an idiosyncratic advertising executive, but it was canceled after one season. 
 
 Mr. Williams had completed work on several films that have not yet been released, including a third installment of the “Night at the Museum” franchise that Fox has scheduled for December, and “Merry Friggin’ Christmas,” an independent comedy about a dysfunctional family. He also provided the voice of an animated character called Dennis the Dog in a British comedy, “Absolutely Anything,” that is planned for release next year, and appeared in “Boulevard,” an independent movie that was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival but does not yet have theatrical distribution. 
 
 Mr. Williams was an admitted abuser of cocaine — which he also referred to as “Peruvian marching powder” and “the devil’s dandruff” — in the 1970s and ‘80s, and addressed his drug habit in his comedy act. “What a wonderful drug,” he said in a sardonic routine from “Live at the Met.” “Anything that makes you paranoid and impotent, give me more of that.” 
 
 In 2006, he checked himself into the Hazelden center in Springbrook, Ore., to be treated for an addiction to alcohol, having fallen off the wagon after some 20 years of sobriety. 
 
 He later explained in an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer that this addiction had not been “caused by anything, it’s just there.” 
 
 “It waits,” Mr. Williams continued. “It lays in wait for the time when you think, ‘It’s fine now, I’m O.K.’ Then, the next thing you know, it’s not O.K. Then you realize, ‘Where am I? I didn’t realize I was in Cleveland.’ ” 
 
 In 2009, he underwent heart surgery for an aortic valve replacement at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, an event that Mr. Williams said caused him to take stock of his life. 
 
 “You appreciate little things,” he said in an interview in The New York Times, “like walks on the beach with a defibrillator.” 
 
 More seriously, Mr. Williams said he had reassessed himself as a performer. “How much more can you give?” he told The Times. “Other than, literally, open-heart surgery onstage? Not much. But the only cure you have right now is the honesty of going, this is who you are. I know who I am.” 
 
 Earlier this year, Mr. Williams checked himself into a rehab facility. His publicist told People magazine that he was “taking the opportunity to fine-tune and focus on his continued commitment, of which he remains extremely proud.” ||||| Robin Williams, who died unexpectedly today at 63, was hugely admired among his own generation -- the genuine affection in the room, say, when he won his "Good Will Hunting" Oscar speaks to just how well-liked he was in Hollywood. And yet unlike many of his contemporaries, Williams had a particular impact on the slice of the population now in our mid-to-late 20s and early 30s. Through the 1990s, Williams, an established film star, shifted into a new gear in his career; he generously and humbly took on entertainment for kids. Williams will be remembered for his edgy comedy and for dramatic turns, but for people my age, Williams was our childhood. 
 
 Williams' filmography in the 1980s and early 1990s is full of prestige projects ("Good Morning, Vietnam," "Awakenings," "Dead Poets Society"), but something shifted with "Hook"; the movie about Peter Pan rediscovering the joy of Neverland had the same effect, perhaps, on Williams, who'd always been wacky and loose on-screen but was suddenly acting like he'd never grown up. It took a fairly humble A-lister to play a supporting role in an animated film at a time when voice acting was an anonymous profession, and a fairly brave comic known for working blue to abandon anything that wasn't safe for young children. And yet Williams' performance as the Genie in "Aladdin" was straightforwardly a triumph, lending one of Disney's grimmer stories its imaginative expansiveness. Without Williams, it's impossible to imagine "Aladdin" becoming the VHS classic it was through the 1990s; people in my age bracket, even those who may not be able to quote chapter and verse, can easily call to mind the sense of fun and comfort Williams' voice conjured. He was generous enough to erase his recognizable face and body entirely, and yet as a blue drawing was more vivid and lifelike than the vast majority of TV characters. 
 
 Again and again, Williams went to extremes in his desire to please. In "Mrs. Doubtfire," simply one of the best family films ever made, the actor buried his face under makeup and his body in a fat suit in order to pull off physical comedy that felt, for kids, somehow illicit. We weren't supposed to be seeing something so strangely charged, even if the moral (about parental love) was brought home safely. 
 
 Certain themes emerged. In "Mrs. Doubtfire," Williams plays a voice actor who's too childlike to sustain his marriage to Sally Field; in "Jumanji," Williams played a man who'd been trapped inside a board game since childhood and who'd never lived in the real world; in "Jack," he played a boy trapped in the body of a man; in "Flubber," he was a professor unable to deal with the very real pressures of running a lab and bedeviled by magical, fun green goo. It hardly needed to be made this explicit to the children in the multiplex seats or, more likely, watching on Blockbuster rental that Williams was like us. He was strangely innocent of adult-world concerns and, better yet, he was utterly unselfish about lowering himself to the level of kids. What he found funny was funny to his audience, who cared not at all about his Oscar nominations or public profile or past comedy career. 
 
 As the century turned, Williams got interested, again, in serious projects, but it didn't help that the mid-budget adult drama was beginning its disappearance. He'd been out of leading-man roles in adult movies for so long that something was off his fastball -- movies like "Jakob the Liar" and "Bicentennial Man" had conceits (a man tries to spread hope among his friends with fanciful lies during the Holocaust; a robot can live forever but just wants to be human) that were two degrees removed from the sunny, high-concept optimism of kids' movies. (He'd lately, fittingly enough, rebooted his children's movie career as Theodore Roosevelt in the "Night at the Museum" movies.) 
 
 It hardly mattered, though, to the now-early-teens who'd been raised on Williams' movies. For them -- for me -- Williams has a place in the pantheon simply by virtue of being that rare star who seemed excited to work on projects we cared about. Giving joy is as important as evoking tears or provoking thought, and Williams' legacy, perhaps, can be measured in the imprints his movies left in rec-room carpets, as kids parked in front of the TV rewound his movies again and again.
– After Robin Williams' sudden death, the tributes are rolling in, with many recalling a comic genius grappling with private challenges. A sampling: When it comes to comedy, "there wasn't a faster brain on the planet," writes Tony Hicks in the Contra Costa Times. We'll be hearing "a litany of tributes about one of the great comedians who ever lived. Much of it will be some of the same adjectives used when any great performer dies—especially before their time. But in Williams' case, most of it will be true." Early in his career, "it was clear that Mr. Williams was one of the most explosively, exhaustingly, prodigiously verbal comedians who ever lived," AO Scott writes in the New York Times. And beyond that, "his essential persona as an entertainer combined neediness and generosity, intelligence and kindness, in ways that were charming and often unexpectedly moving." Williams may have gotten his start long before Aladdin, but he gave a "generous and humble" gift to the millennial generation, writes Daniel D'Addario at Salon. "Williams will be remembered for his edgy comedy and for dramatic turns, but for people my age, Williams was our childhood," from Mrs. Doubtfire to Jumanji to Flubber. In the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan recalls a moment when, facing an onslaught of photographers, Williams asked him—in the voice of a fly from a 1950s sci-fi flick—to "help me, Ken. Help me." The experience stuck with him and seems particularly resonant today, he writes.