Robin Williams

Robin Williams grew up as a lonely, wealthy child in the suburbs of Detroit and Chicago, often alone in a large house, where he played with thousands of toy soldiers and invented voices for them. He said later that his comedy began as a way of getting his mother's attention. As an adult he became famous for an improvisational style so fast and wild that audiences struggled to keep up, cycling through dozens of characters, accents and voices in a few minutes.

He was born on July 21, 1951, in Chicago, at 1:34 in the afternoon, according to his birth certificate. Mercury and Pluto are both in Leo, and Venus is in Virgo, all in his tenth house of public life and career. Mercury in Leo describes a theatrical, dramatic mind, and Pluto adds intensity and a compulsive drive. Few placements could better describe a comedian whose words poured out on stage with an almost uncontrollable energy, and whose genius was public, improvised and enormous.

His Sun is in late Cancer, with Mars and Uranus also in Cancer, all in his ninth house of higher learning and wider horizons. Cancer is sensitive and emotional, and Uranus adds sudden, unpredictable leaps. Williams studied at the Juilliard School in New York, where his classmate and close friend was Christopher Reeve.

His Moon is in Pisces in the fourth house, the most private part of a chart. A Pisces Moon is deeply sensitive, empathetic and vulnerable, and it can be drawn toward escape. Behind the manic energy, Williams was known as shy and gentle, and he struggled for much of his life with depression and with addiction to cocaine and alcohol.

His breakthrough came in 1978 as the alien Mork on Mork & Mindy. He went on to films including Good Morning, Vietnam, Dead Poets Society and Mrs. Doubtfire, and he voiced the Genie in Disney's Aladdin, a performance that changed how animated films used celebrity voices. In 1998 he took home an Oscar for his supporting role in Good Will Hunting.

Jupiter in Aries, in his sixth house, describes energy and enthusiasm in daily work, and Saturn in Virgo, in his eleventh house, suggests a serious commitment to friends and causes. He performed for troops overseas and supported many charities.

Neptune in Libra lies in his twelfth house, the area of hidden suffering. On August 11, 2014, Williams died by suicide at his home in California, at sixty-three. An autopsy later found that he had been suffering from Lewy body dementia, a severe neurological disease that had gone undiagnosed. The Leo planets at the summit of the chart made him a comic genius in public; the Pisces Moon carried the sorrow he kept at home.

If you are thinking about suicide, or you fear for someone close to you, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline answers calls and texts across the United States around the clock.