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By Piya Sinha-Roy LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – From an eccentric alien to an animated blue genie, a loveable British nanny and a fatherly therapist, actor Robin Williams used his multi-layered brand of comedy to make people laugh. While the Oscar-winner’s death came as a bolt from the blue to the public, the actor’s longtime friend and fellow comedian Bob Zmuda said he was not “totally shocked” by the news. Zmuda, the founder of the charity Comic Relief for which the actor had helped raise more than $70 million, said that Williams had difficulty connecting with people off-stage and that even those who knew him well were unaware of how severe his depression was. “That was his life blood, that was his psychological imperative, and without that, he was pretty lost.” Budd Friedman, the founder of The Improv comedy clubs, last saw Williams about a year ago when the actor dropped by a club to perform a short routine.

By Piya Sinha-Roy LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – From an eccentric alien to an animated blue genie, a loveable British nanny and a fatherly therapist, actor Robin Williams used his multi-layered brand of comedy to make people laugh. Zmuda, the founder of the charity Comic Relief for which the actor had helped raise more than $70 million, said that Williams had difficulty connecting with people off-stage and that even those who knew him well were unaware of how severe his depression was. “That was his life blood, that was his psychological imperative, and without that, he was pretty lost.” Budd Friedman, the founder of The Improv comedy clubs, last saw Williams about a year ago when the actor dropped by a club to perform a short routine. Friedman said in the 35 years he had known Williams, he had never seen any glimpse of his suffering.

Friends and fans of Lauren Bacall remembered the sultry stage and screen actress who died on Tuesday at the age of 89 as an icon and a legend from Hollywood’s Golden Age. The former model who fell in love with and married actor Humphrey Bogart in one of Tinseltown’s greatest romances died in New York, the estate of the Bogart family confirmed on Twitter. Barbra Streisand, who worked with Bacall in the 1996 film “The Mirror Has Two Faces,” described her death as a “terrible loss for us all.” “It was my privilege to have known her,” she said in a statement. Jessie Tyler Ferguson, of the hit television show “Modern Family,” said he was honored to have met her.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An agreeable young adult riff on Orwell — via “Logan’s Run” — topped with the kind of magic-transformative baloney that passes for an ending in too many otherwise-fine Hollywood adventures, Phillip Noyce’s “The Giver” greets a man-made Utopia with an eternal question: “If you can’t feel, what’s the point?”