Robin Williams was struggling — in almost total secrecy — against early-stage Parkinson’s disease when he killed himself, his anguished widow revealed on Thursday.
Williams was sick but sober when he hanged himself in their home near San Francisco, wife Susan Schneider said in a statement.
“Robin’s sobriety was intact and he was brave as he struggled with his own battles of depression, anxiety as well as early stages of Parkinson’s Disease, which he was not yet ready to share publicly,” Schneider, a graphic designer, said in the statement, which was released by Williams’ publicist.
Williams, 63, had told no one but his family about the disease. Even close friends had no clue he was battling the devastating, incurable condition, which can lead to tremors, depression, sleeplessness and dementia, and leave a sufferer bed-bound in a decade.
“It’s heartbreaking to know [now] that he was diagnosed,” said close friend Tony Tom, a San Francisco bicycle repairman who knew Williams for 30 years.
“Kind of makes a little more sense,” Tom said of his friend’s suicide. “That was one thing he feared — he didn’t relish getting old.”
Shocked by the posthumous Parkinson’s revelation was actor Michael J. Fox, 53, who has lived with the illness since being diagnosed in 1991.
Stunned to learn Robin had PD. Pretty sure his support for our Fdn predated his diagnosis. A true friend; I wish him peace.
— Michael J. Fox (@realmikefox) August 14, 2014
Fox, who didn’t go public with his own diagnosis until 1998, is the most active advocate for research and education among the celebrities who have Parkinson’s, a list that includes boxing legend Muhammad Ali, former Attorney General Janet Reno and Olympic cyclist Davis Phinney.
Williams had been a guest host at a November 2004 gala fundraiser that the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research had thrown at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York.
Fox, who has stayed active and continued his career for almost a quarter-century with the disease, has been a comfort to countless sufferers of the illness, which afflicts an estimated 1 percent of Americans over the age of 60.
The Parkinson’s revelation also casts an ironic light on Williams’ success in cheering up Christopher Reeve after the “Superman” actor was thrown from a horse and paralyzed in 1995.
When crippling debilitation struck, Williams could shore up his longtime friend’s spirits — barging into Reeve’s hospital room in medical scrubs, claiming to be a proctologist — but he could not cast out his own demons.
“For the first time since the accident, I laughed,” Reeve had recalled of the moment. “My old friend had helped me know that somehow I was going to be OK.”
Reeve died in 2004.
Schneider released her poignant statement from seclusion, and has not been back at the Tiburon home she shared with Williams since immediately after speaking to cops on Monday, the day Williams’ body was found hanged by a belt in his bedroom, neighbors told the Daily Mail.
“Since his passing, all of us who loved Robin have found some solace in the tremendous outpouring of affection and admiration for him from the millions of people whose lives he touched,” her statement continued.
The pair’s relationship had appeared strained at times during the past year. The Marin County coroner’s office, in announcing the apparent cause of death Tuesday, said Williams and Schneider had retired to separate bedrooms Sunday night and she thought he was still asleep when she left the house the next morning.
And Schneider was a virtual no-show on the set of “The Crazy Ones,” Williams’ ill-fated return to series TV, insiders told The Post, steering clear even while other cast members flooded the sound stage with spouses and children.
“We never saw her,” said one source of Schneider.
“Other people all brought their spouses — Sarah Michelle Gellar would bring Freddie Prinze and her daughter to visit all the time,” the source said. “But Robin Williams was only ever with his assistant,” close friend Rebecca Erwin-Spencer, who’d worked with Williams for decades and was the one who found his body.
“He would say, ‘My wife is working in San Francisco’ . . . It was as if he felt a little left out. He seemed to be missing her.”