Since Robin Williams died in 2014, his widow Susan Schneider has made it her life's mission to educate the public about the devastating brain disease he had.
Gilbert Carrasquillo/FilmMagic/Getty ImagesSusan Schneider and Robin Williams in 2012, a year after they got married.
For most of her life, Susan Schneider lived in happy anonymity. That all changed in 2007, when she crossed paths with Robin Williams at an Apple Store. Their chance encounter blossomed into true love, and Williams and Schneider married a few years later. But their bliss wouldn’t last.
In 2014, Williams shocked the world — and Schneider — when he died by suicide in their California home. Though Schneider had been by Williams’ side as he battled various health problems in the preceding months, things seemed normal on his last day alive. Schneider had no worries about her husband’s safety when they told each other goodnight on August 10, 2014.
But tragically, Robin Williams was found dead the next morning, August 11th, at the age of 63. The beloved actor and comedian had died by suicide.
After his death, Williams’ autopsy revealed that he’d suffered from an undiagnosed brain disease called Lewy body dementia (LBD). Schneider then made it her mission to educate the public about the devastating disease — and she became her late husband’s biggest champion.
“You Found Me”: How Susan Schneider Met Robin Williams
Susan Schneider Fine ArtBefore she married Robin Williams in 2011, Susan Schneider was mostly known as an artist and a graphic designer.
Born on January 24, 1964 in Belvedere, California, Susan Schneider attended California College of the Arts and later went on to become an artist and graphic designer. She lived a relatively private life until late 2007, when she noticed Robin Williams at the Apple store in Corte Madera, California. After an internal debate, she decided to say hello to the iconic actor.
“I walked in and saw this man and I thought: ‘I think that’s Robin Williams,'” she told The Guardian in 2021. “Then, on my way out, I happened to look at him again and he was smiling at me and something inside me said: ‘Oh, just go over and say hi.’ He was wearing camouflage print, so I said: ‘How’s that camo working out for you?’ And he said: ‘Not too good — you found me.'”
Schneider later told PEOPLE that their connection was “this instant familiarity and comfort” and that they met “right on time.” By the next year after they met, they had fallen in love — and Schneider was sure she wanted to be with Williams forever. Shortly thereafter, he proposed.
“He came into the bedroom and he got down on one knee and he said, ‘Will you be Mrs. Robin Williams?’ And I said, ‘With all my heart, yes. With all my heart,'” Schneider told PEOPLE about the joyous experience.
On October 22, 2011, Susan Schneider and Robin Williams got married in Napa Valley, California. They moved into a house in Tiburon’s Paradise Cay in California with Schneider’s two sons and began to build their life together.
Susan Schneider WilliamsSusan Schneider and Robin Williams got married in 2011.
But just a couple of years later, Robin Williams began to suffer from a myriad of alarming physical and mental health problems.
The Difficult Months Leading Up To Robin Williams’ Suicide
According to the book Robin by Dave Itzkoff, Robin Williams’ health began to suffer in October 2013. His symptoms ranged from indigestion to tremors in his left arm to vision problems to a stooped posture. And the more symptoms that popped up, the more anxious Williams became.
“It was like this endless parade of symptoms, and not all of them would raise their head at once,” Susan Schneider later recalled to Itzkoff. “It was like playing whack-a-mole. Which symptom is it this month? I thought, is my husband a hypochondriac? We’re chasing it and there’s no answers.”
Williams confessed to his worried wife that he felt like he was “losing his mind” and that he needed a “reboot for his brain.”
Then, in May 2014, Williams was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. But Williams didn’t seem to feel satisfied with the diagnosis. And as the months passed, Williams’ symptoms seemed to get even worse.
Robin Williams/InstagramThis is one of the last photos that Robin Williams posted on his Instagram before he died by suicide in August 2014.
He had trouble sleeping at night and suffered from relentless paranoid thoughts. On the night before he died, Williams felt so anxious about his watches being stolen that he stuffed them into a sock, drove to his assistant’s house, and dropped the watches off for safekeeping.
Despite this, Schneider soon felt optimistic. She and her husband spent a “perfect day” together, according to an interview she later gave on Good Morning America, and Williams seemed affectionate as usual as they got ready for bed. He offered to give Schneider a foot massage, and then they exchanged their normal nightly salutation of “Goodnight, my love.” Williams went to his bedroom with his iPad, which Schneider took as another good sign because she hadn’t seen him read or watch TV in months.
“He seemed like he was doing better, like he was on the path of something,” she said. “I’m thinking, ‘O.K., stuff is working… he’s getting sleep.'”
Plus, they were going to visit a neurocognitive testing facility soon, which could provide further clarity about what was going on with him.
As such, Schneider left the house the next morning — August 11th — around 10:30 a.m. to run some errands without any idea that something was wrong. Williams’ door was closed, so she decided to let him rest. But when Williams still wasn’t up by 11 a.m., his assistant — who had already knocked and slipped a note under the door — grew concerned and jimmied the lock.
Robin Williams was dead inside. He’d died by suicide at the age of 63.
Susan Schneider After Robin Williams’ Death
In the aftermath of Robin Williams’ death, his publicist noted that he had been suffering from “severe depression.” As such, many thought that depression was the main reason for his suicide, especially since he had previously struggled with his mental health. But Williams’ autopsy revealed that Williams had an undiagnosed case of Lewy body dementia (LBD).
Tulemo/Wikimedia CommonsA photomicrograph of a Lewy body (indicated by arrow), a protein that can dangerously build up inside a person’s brain.
“The doctors said to me after the autopsy: ‘Are you surprised that your husband had Lewy bodies throughout his entire brain and brain stem?’ I didn’t even know what Lewy bodies were, but I said: ‘No, I’m not surprised,'” Susan Schneider told The Guardian. “The fact that something had infiltrated every part of my husband’s brain? That made perfect sense.”
A type of dementia caused by a buildup of proteins called “Lewy bodies” in the brain, LBD is a progressive condition that can cause problems with movement, cognitive function, and the nervous system, as well as changes in behavior and mood. Schneider is convinced that it led to Williams’ death.
“Robin did not die of depression. Depression is one of the 40 symptoms of Lewy body dementia,” Schneider told Haute Living San Francisco in 2023. “We were together for seven years, and my husband was not depressed.”
She believes that Williams had grown paranoid about his visit to the neurocognitive testing facility, because he feared he would get “locked up.”
GTCRFOTO/Alamy Stock PhotoRobin Williams and Susan Schneider at the Happy Feet Two premiere in November 2011, shortly after their wedding.
In the years since Robin Williams’ death, Schneider has been on a mission to educate the world about LBD, which remains a little-understood condition. Though treatments exist to manage symptoms, there is no cure.
In that pursuit, Schneider produced Robin’s Wish, a documentary about Williams’ final years and experience with LBD, which came out in 2020.
Aside from her advocacy work, Schneider has also had conflicts with Williams’ three children, Zak, Zelda, and Cody. Though Williams left most of his estate to them, he wanted Schneider to have the couple’s home and enough money to maintain it. Williams’ children and Schneider, however, disagreed over the details of his estate. They settled the dispute in 2015.
Since then, Schneider has been left to mourn the man she loved dearly. But she’s also become Robin Williams’ biggest champion. Through her advocacy work, she’s spreading the word about Lewy body dementia — and helping others to find answers that she and her husband never had.
After reading about Susan Schneider, Robin Williams’ widow, discover the story of Linda Lee Cadwell, the wife of the late Bruce Lee. Or, learn about Vivian Cash Liberto, the first wife of Johnny Cash.
