Robin Williams^†

At the Happy Days audition in 1977, he was asked to sit down. He sat on his head. That got him the role of Mork. His guest appearance produced the first standing ovation a studio audience ever gave a guest star on that show, and the fan mail it generated launched Mork & Mindy as a spinoff. Scripts left deliberate gaps labeled 'Mork can go off here' because trying to contain him wasn't productive. At peak, 60 million viewers watched weekly. He was on the cover of Time by March 1979.

The story most people carry about his death shifted in 2016 when his widow Susan Schneider Williams published an account in Neurology revealing the full scope of his posthumously diagnosed Lewy body dementia. His autopsy found Lewy bodies throughout his brain, with the neuropathologist calling it one of the worst cases seen. His will included a clause restricting use of his image and likeness for at least 25 years after his death. He became the public face for a disease most people had never heard of.

He studied at Juilliard alongside Christopher Reeve, and when Reeve was paralyzed after a 1995 horse-riding accident, Williams showed up at the hospital that week dressed in surgical scrubs and speaking in a Russian accent. Reeve said it was the first time he'd laughed since the accident. During Schindler's List filming, he called Steven Spielberg weekly to do 15 minutes of stand-up over the phone because Spielberg needed somewhere to put the grief. For someone with no off switch, he seemed to know exactly when other people needed one.

He was cremated and his ashes scattered in San Francisco Bay the day after his death. A private memorial at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco drew Ben Stiller, Danny DeVito, George Lucas, and Nancy Pelosi. Billy Crystal delivered a tribute at the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards two weeks later.