Riffs from the heart

Sitting down with Robin Williams is like being treated to a personal stand-up show. Although he can be considered and focused, it's almost as if the comic and actor can't help himself, inevitably riffing on anything and everything from marriage to the new iPhone. His comedic genius is evident as soon as he opens his mouth. This is a man who could probably develop a gut-busting routine based on something as innocuous as a doorknob.

Not surprisingly, the buzz among entertainment journalists is that Williams is notoriously hard to interview. He can barely keep a straight line of thought going for more than a few sentences, while the interviewer, it must be said, has trouble keeping a straight face. Generally, a 20-minute chat with him devolves into a rampant use of profanities on his part, and uncontrollable giggling from anyone who happens to be within earshot.

That said, Williams was in a slightly more sombre mood recently (well, for a short while, anyway). He turned to talk of rehab, God, religion and alcoholism - all of which have been close to his heart lately.

'You get a real strong sense of God when you go through rehab,' he says. Williams, 56, checked himself into a rehab facility in Los Angeles for about a month last year. His spokeswoman at the time said he'd been sober for 20 years, but then 'found himself drinking again, and has decided to take proactive measures to deal with this for his own well-being and the well-being of his family'. A year on, he says he's come out of it a better man. 'Having the idea of a really loving and forgiving God really helps if you're an alcoholic - someone going, 'It's OK. Remember, there was wine at the Last Supper.''

Williams, who was born in Chicago but moved to San Francisco as a teenager, says religion was an integral part of his childhood. But having just gone through rehab, his perspective has changed.

'It's become much more personal to me,' he says. 'Instead of my mother saying, 'We're going to church now', there's much more a sense of [religion] coming back to life for me. As a child, I was heavily into religion. I was into the ritual of it. I'm Episcopalian, which is Catholic Lite - same religion, half the guilt. I grew up in San Francisco where the gospel music is so beautiful. I'm more religious in the sense of an open, compassionate church that's there to take care of people with outreach programmes and counselling. The idea of really working together, that means something. I'm religious on that level, trying to take care of every- one, and the idea of compassion is powerful to me.'