Robin Williams Almost Didn't Get The Role That Made Him A Household Name

Robin Williams had quite a winding path to fame. The legendary comedy actor studied drama at Juilliard for three years before moving back to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he got promoted from bartending to performing comedy skits. Continuing on the stand-up path eventually landed him the role of Mork on the '70s sitcom "Happy Days." While Williams' wit and improvisational skills impressed "Happy Days" creator Garry Marshall, he was hired as a replacement for impressionist actor John Byner.

Byner was the third person Marshall asked to play Mork, but he changed his mind about playing the alien after accepting the role and working on set. "Happy Days" actor Anson Williams told The Hollywood Reporter, "So, they hire some guy for Mork — bad actor, bad part. ... He was horrible!" Byner giving up the role was a win-win situation for Williams and Marshall. If he never left the role, the show wouldn't have resulted in the "Mork and Mindy" spin-off that helped Williams get famous and accumulate a net worth of $50 million before his death in 2014.

Pursuing stand-up comedy before diving into acting was a great career move for Robin Williams. Although he was grateful for getting cast as Mork on "Happy Days," the actor had quite the adjustment from working on stage to working on television. In an interview with Pioneers of Television, Williams shared that he incorporated foreign swear words into his improvised alien language. "Eventually, they had to have a censor who spoke, I think spoke Spanish – three or four different languages – because I was sneaking things in in different languages," the actor recalled. "They went, 'She knows what that means.'"

Williams came a long way from his days on "Mork and Mindy" as he clearly didn't incorporate bad words into his voice acting roles in '90s cartoons. His years as a film star didn't diminish his love for stand-up comedy, and he went back on stage in 2002. When asked if stand-up was his first love on "The Charlie Rose Show," Williams said, "It has always been a wonderful kind of alternative to the acting because it did two things: pay the bills and also great therapy." As one of Hollywood's most successful but tragic stars, it must have been nice to have an outlet outside of film. "To be able to talk about things, whether things going on in my life, going on in the world, it was always kind of a great release," he said.