Facts About Robins Williams From HBO's Come Inside My Mind
8 Fascinating Revelations Uncovered in the Robin Williams Documentary
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As mentioned, Williams struggled with addictions to cocaine and alcohol. He quit in 1982, and though he was adamant that he never went back to using cocaine, he began drinking again in 2005. The documentary alludes to alcohol being a coping mechanism for Williams for his demons and his "addiction" to comedy.
In the film, One Hour Photo director Mark Romanek talks about how he believes the actor's need for laughter actually affected his work on set. "If he didn't get [the urge to be funny] out of his system, it would have affected his performance in a bad way," he says. "I realised when he made people laugh that hard, he used to kind of get high from it, an endorphin rush or something. If he was being really funny one second before the take . . . he almost had this glow of joy, even though he's playing a serious scene, which also gave this patina of weirdness to the performance."
Williams would eventually go to rehab in 2006 and again in mid-2014.