However, early in his career, Williams almost took a very different path. Long before his acclaimed dramatic roles, he was reportedly considered for a lead role in one of cinema’s most chilling films: “The Shining.” According to Vulture, Stanley Kubrick contemplated casting Williams as Jack Torrance, a role ultimately portrayed by Jack Nicholson. In the film, based on Stephen King’s novel, Torrance is a father unraveling amidst rage, alcoholism, and eerie supernatural influences while isolated at a haunted hotel.

Imagining Williams in this iconic role is challenging, given Nicholson’s enduring portrayal. Stephen King famously disapproved of Kubrick’s “The Shining,” and cast Steven Weber as Jack in his own 1990s miniseries adaptation. Comparing Weber to Nicholson is inevitable, and picturing Williams, who later voiced the Genie in “Aladdin,” in such a sinister role is even harder.

The notion of Williams nearly playing Jack Torrance has become a popular piece of film trivia, often cited in speculative articles about alternate casting choices. This tale is even featured in the 2015 book, “The Amazing Book of Movie Trivia,” which claims Kubrick found Williams “too psychotic” for the role. Yet, the truth of this story remains questionable.

Unkrich clarifies, “Stanley first read Stephen King’s novel proofs in 1977 and cast Nicholson that year.” His research in the Warner Bros. Archives for the book “Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’” reveals that production began in April 1978, months before “Mork & Mindy” premiered. Unless time travel from a Stephen King novel is involved, this remains an intriguing but likely unfounded internet myth.

Williams was just getting famous in 1980; at the time, he was best-known for starring on “Mork & Mindy,” a “Happy Days” spin-off sitcom where he played an alien trying to understand human life. As Stanley Kubrick biographer Lee Unkrich explained to Snopes, the timeline suggests Kubrick likely hadn’t even heard of Williams at the time, let alone considered him for Jack Torrance before landing on Jack Nicholson.

“Stanley first read the galleys of Stephen King’s novel in 1977. Nicholson was cast that year as well,” Unkrich explained, having scoured the Warner Bros. Archives while researching a book called “Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining.’” He added, “Production on the film began in April of 1978.” That’s an important detail because the sitcom that made Williams famous didn’t even premiere until that fall. Unless there’s some twisted, Stephen King-ian time-travel happening here, this may just be an Internet-driven myth.

Though Robin Williams didn’t star in “The Shining” – and might not have even been considered, depending on who you ask — he did eventually get a chance to prove that he could be scary. In Mark Romanek’s 2002 film “One Hour Photo,” Williams played Sy Parrish, a photo-development technician at a big-box store who becomes fixated on and eventually stalks one of the families who drops film at his counter.

He’s deliciously creepy in the part, but he also makes the character uncomfortably sympathetic in fascinating ways. Yes, you want to cringe yourself out of existence when he begins to follow his customers home, but he also just seems desperately sad and lonely; Williams navigates that tension with an incredible amount of nuance. On the DVD commentary for the film (via YouTube) — which was one of the only ones he ever recorded — Williams acknowledged what a departure this role was from his normal on-screen persona. “I could look at this character because it is so different, and so, kind of, a definite step away from myself,” he said.

We’ve explained the ending of “One Hour Photo” here, but Williams always refused to interpret it for people. “I can’t tell you,” he said, “and I don’t want to.”