Sir Sam Neill has said that Robin Williams was “inconsolably solitary and deeply depressed” at the height of his career.
The actor has penned a new memoir, Did I Ever Tell You This?
In the book, Sir Sam, 75, writes of Williams: “He had fame, he was rich, people loved him, great kids — the world was his oyster.
“And yet I felt more sorry for him than I can express. He was the loneliest man on a lonely planet.”
He also recalled having “great chats” with the actor together on the set of their panned sci-fi film Bicentennial Man in 1999.
“We would talk about this and that, sometimes even about the work we were about to do,” Neill wrote.
“He was irresistibly, outrageously, irrepressibly, gigantically funny... [but Robin was] the saddest person I ever met.”
The Good Will Hunting star died by suicide on August 11, 2014.
He had been incorrectly diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease three months before his suicide at age 63.
Following his death, it was found that he’d actually been suffering from Lewy body dementia, which is the second most common type of progressive dementia.
Sir Sam, who said he “could sense the dark space inside [Williams]", added: “Funny stuff just poured out of him. And everybody was in stitches, and when everybody was in stitches, you could see Robin was happy.”
Williams, who according to his family struggled with depression and addiction throughout his life, left behind three children.
In July 2021, his son Zak revealed the star’s frustration after he was misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s.
He told The Genius Life: "What he was going through didn’t match one to one (with what) many Parkinson’s patients experience. So, I think that was hard for him.
“There was a focus issue that frustrated him, there were issues associated with how he felt and also from a neurological perspective he didn’t feel great.
"He was very uncomfortable."
