The long, sad decline of Robin Williams: a timeline

DUNCE CAP Never before in the history of Hollywood has one man's talent so completely abandoned him. License to Wed represents the final, pathetic clang of the gong in Robin Williams's catastrophic career meltdown.

Once, Robin Williams was considered the comedic genius of his generation. Through the '70s he rose to fame as the sitcom alien Mork, and in the '80s he thrilled audiences with spastic, mostly improvisational stand-up routines, culminating in his legendary 1987 performance at New York's Metropolitan Opera house.

But it's no secret that the man we see now, the man who this summer brings us License to Wed, is a shell of the comedian we once knew.

At some critical point Robin Williams crossed over to the dark side. We suspect it happened sometime in the mid '90s, when acclaim for his performance in Aladdin perhaps sent the wrong message and positively reinforced comedic stylings just shy of schizophrenia.

That's when America's lovably manic jester began to resemble a sad, needy clown, and his trademark schtick—rapid cycling between impersonations of Russian doctors, gay cowboys, and Jewish mamelahs in under 20 seconds—gave way to incoherent, seizure-like free-association bits, as he gradually degenerated into what he is today: the Chernobyl of comedy, discomfiting audiences and leaving a noxious cloud of groans in his wake.

But how exactly did it happen? How did Williams, not unlike cult leader David Koresh, lure audiences in with his late '80s charisma only to hold them hostage for the next 20 years with nonsensical accents, wild hand gestures, and mawkish sentimentality? Below, Radar charts Williams's career freefall.

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Early Symptoms
	Mar 8, 1996: Williams appears in Mike Nichols's hit The Birdcage as the butch half of a gay couple living in South Beach. At the time the New York Times hails it as one of his "most cohesive and least antic performances." Unfortunately, he's never able to rein the camp back in. Williams takes the gay persona he perfected here, beats it to death, then drags its bloody corpse through the next decade.
	Aug 9, 1996: Williams is a logical choice to play the lead in Francis Ford Coppola's sad and strange Jack, the story of a 10-year-old boy with a medical condition that makes him look like a 40-year-old man. Critics largely give him a pass. Having adopted the role of an overgrown, overbearing pre-adolescent, Williams never quite leaves it behind. A man-child is born.
	Nov 26, 1997: As an "absent minded professor" Williams invents a flying rubber, ahem, Flubber, substance that seems to be a perfect marketing device for Nickelodeon. It's also the perfect excuse for Williams to court publicity while further advertising his "never-grow-up" complex, now rivaling that of Michael Jackson.
	Dec 5, 1997: A progressively puffier Williams appears in Good Will Hunting as the shrink who breaks through to math genius Matt Damon by relaying stories about how his wife used to fart in her sleep. Though his performance skirts the boundaries of acceptable touchy-feely-ness, the Academy rewards him for dialing it down by giving him an Oscar. He does not take the implicit critique and goes on just to dial it up.

Photos, in order of appearance: Ethan Miller/Getty Images; MGM; Hollywood Pictures; Walt Disney