喜剧演员的悲剧落幕

《死亡诗社》中的Captain永远离开了我们，那句Seize the day却仍言犹在耳。Robbin Williams以自己的生命为全世界带来的欢乐，自己却在抑郁中黯然离世。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

asphyxia 窒息

quirky 古怪的

defibrillator 除颤器

somber 忧郁的

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Actor Robin Williams remembered

By Richard Waters in San Francisco

* * *

Robin Williams, the comic actor whose manic, fast-paced delivery made him instantly familiar to movie audiences around the world, was found dead on Monday at his home in northern California, local police said.

The Oscar-winning actor was found by a personal assistant hanged to death, and the preliminary finding is that he died of “asphyxia due to hanging”, a local sheriff’s official said on Tuesday. A full investigation was under way.

Mr Williams, 63, had been struggling with “severe depression”, his media representative said on CNN later in the day.

The news brought instant tributes and messages of sadness in the entertainment world and beyond. “Heartbroken by the news of Robin Williams’ passing,” Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple, tweeted. “He was an incomparable talent and a great human being. Rest in peace.” Apple used a speech Mr Williams gave in one of his movies, Dead Poets Society, in an iPad advert earlier this year.

US president Barack Obama also issued statement: “Robin Williams was an airman, a doctor, a genie, a nanny, a president, a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan, and everything in between. But he was one of a kind. 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.”

Born in Chicago in 1951, Mr Williams attended the Juilliard School in New York before getting his start in stand-up comedy and television.

He became a cult favourite with a generation of Americans in the late 1970s after his first breakthrough television role, as the zany alien Mork, first in Happy Days and then in a TV spin-off, Mork & Mindy.

That was a prelude to the movie that sealed his rise – Good Morning Vietnam, in which he played a hyper-loquacious army radio DJ. Jumping between voices in a rapid-fire delivery, the role displayed the quirky humour and brilliant versatility of the onscreen persona that became his trademark.

Behind the ebullient comic characters he often played, Mr Williams’ personal life was often far from happy. He said that he overcame a cocaine and alcohol habit at the time his first son was born, in 1983, but slipped back into drinking two decades later. He checked himself into a rehabilitation centre in 2006.

That was followed three years later by surgery to replace a valve in his heart. But the personal troubles, including two divorces, did not prevent the reflexive irony that peppered his conversation during interviews, even when discussing his darkest moments.

“You appreciate little things, like walks on the beach with a defibrillator,” he told the New York Times after his surgery. “How much more can you give? 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.”

In a sombre mood soon after, talking to The Guardian newspaper about a comic role in a movie involving death, he said: “In America they really do mythologise people when they die.”

Although known chiefly for his comic roles, it was as the psychologist in 1997’s Good Will Hunting, playing opposite Matt Damon, that Mr Williams earned his only Academy Award. He was also nominated for Oscars for his roles in Good Morning Vietnam, Dead Poets Society and The Fisher King.

The Marin County sheriff’s office said it had been called shortly before noon on Monday to a home that Mr Williams shared with his third wife, Susan Schneider, in Tiburon, north of San Francisco. Mr Williams was pronounced dead at the scene shortly afterwards. He had last been seen alive at 10pm the previous day.

Fellow comedy actor Steve Martin said in a tweet: “I could not be more stunned by the loss of Robin Williams, mensch, great talent, acting partner, genuine soul.”

Ms 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.”

请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目:

1. Which movie won Robin Williams his only Academy Award?

a. Dead Poets Society（1989）

b. Good Will Hunting （1997）

c. Good Morning Vietnam （1987）

2. What does the sentence mean:“Robin Williams was an airman, a doctor, a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan, and everything in between.”?

a. Robin Williams had done many other jobs before he became an actor.

b. Robin Williams once served in the army and loved fairy tales.

c. Robin Williams had played many impressive roles on the screen.

3. What do we know about Robin Williams from the article?

a. He was a comic player, and his personal life was also very happy.

b. He got married when he was at university and never divorced.

c. He was well-know for his manic, fast-paced delivery and quirky humors.

[1] 答案b. Good Will Hunting （1997）

解释：文章倒数第四段：……it was as the psychologist in 1997’s Good Will Hunting, playing opposite Matt Damon, that Mr Williams earned his only Academy Award.

[2] 答案c. Robin Williams had played many impressive roles on the screen.

解释：根据上下文语境推测可知，奥巴马总统的悼词列举了Robin Williams所扮演过的角色以此表达对其的敬意。

[3] 答案c. He was well-know for his manic, fast-paced delivery and quirky humors.

解释：文章首句即点明了Robin Williams广受观众欢迎的特点，是其夸张的表演与奇特的幽默。Williams生前患有抑郁症，离过两次婚。