“He just cried and said, ‘I can’t, Cheri. I don’t know how anymore. I don’t know how to be funny.’ ”
“He was sobbing in my arms at the end of every day. It was horrible. Horrible,” makeup artist Cheri Minns recalled. “I said to his people, ‘I’m a makeup artist. I don’t have the capacity to deal with what’s happening to him.’ ”
Williams was suffering from a pernicious neurodegenerative disease that was in the process of robbing him of his talents, his brain and his very self.
He had a rampant drug and alcohol addiction (he famously said cocaine was “God’s way of telling you you’re making too much money”).
Williams began to complain about an array of symptoms: indigestion, trouble urinating, insomnia, loss of his sense of smell and heartburn.
Friends thought Williams was depressed over a cancellation with CBS, but other strange behaviors started to emerge that couldn’t be so easily explained. He grew paranoid over a belief that people were stealing from him. On the set of “Night at the Museum,” he suffered a severe panic attack and was placed on antipsychotic medication.
The last move
Williams settled down for the night at his San Francisco Bay Area home. It had been a rough day. Williams had fixated on his collection of vintage wristwatches, which he wanted to relocate for fear that they would be stolen. But that night he seemed calm and even offered his wife a foot massage before retiring to his own room.
“As we always did, we said to each other, ‘Good night, my love,’ ” Schneider recalled. “He seemed like he was doing better, like he was on the path of something,” she later said. “I’m thinking, ‘OK, stuff is working. The medication, he’s getting sleep.’ ”
When Schneider woke the next morning, she noticed the door to Williams’s bedroom was still shut. She told Itzkoff she was relieved he was finally getting some needed sleep.
By 11 a.m., Williams had still not left his room, and Spencer became concerned. She used a paper clip to open his bedroom door and found a grisly scene: Williams had hanged himself with his belt.
