"Why do I stand up here? Anybody…I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way." John Keating’s words, otherwise known as ‘The Captain’, in The Dead Poets Society, were my first thought when I read the news of Robin Williams’ death. The local sheriff pronounced the 63-year-old actor and comedian deceased at 12.02 pm on Sunday, in the house that he shared with his wife in Tiburon, north of San Francisco. It just so happens that I am now writing while looking out of an apartment window in the 24th St Mission, San Francisco. It feels very different to find out one of your childhood role models is dead while you are in the very city where he lived. It feels closer, more personal.

Some people would describe Robin Williams’ characters as ‘cheesy’. Personally when I hear this I get irritated at what seems a cynical taste in cinema, one that likes the so-called-intellectual films out of snobbism rather than intelligence. As a Cambridge student I feel The Dead Poets Society talks to us about how our DoS and lecturers inspire passion for our subject and dedication to it. Cambridge is about developing a critical mind during supervisions: exactly what John Keating teaches his students. When term starts we all get engrossed in our work, concentrating on meeting deadlines or complaining about Week Four Blues, so we forget about how extraordinary it is to study at Cambridge and the poetry that there is to it. This is why Robin Williams films are so powerful, because they remind you of the beauty and value of life, no matter whether you are "an airman, a doctor, a genie, a nanny, a president, a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan, and everything in between", in the words of Barak Obama. He reminds us of that with poetry and a smile.

His films are about the beauty of life, but he died of suspected suicide and his representative, Mara Buxbaum, said he was “battling severe depression”. Williams battled with alcohol and cocaine in the early 1980s and relapsed in 2006. Last month he returned to the Hazelden Addiction Treatment Center, Minnesota. The natural question is: was it all a lie? Have we believed in a poetry that was in fact a fake? I say no. His wife, Susan Schneider said: "This morning I lost my husband and best friend, while the world lost one of its most beloved artists and beautiful human beings. I am utterly heartbroken." Reading Schneider’s words one notices she called him her best friend, that’s what the psychologist Sean, played by Williams, tells Will in Good Will Hunting: "My wife used to fart when she was nervous…But Will, she’s been dead for two years, and that's the shit I remember: wonderful stuff you know? Little things like that. Those are the things I miss the most. The little idiosyncrasies that only I know about: that's what made her my wife".

Hook shows a busy father who learns that one day his kids will stop running after him; he will run after them. In Mrs Doubtfire, a wife sees his husband in a new light, realizing sometimes your marriage is not quite ended yet. Good Morning Vietnam reminds us to break the rules and of the power of laughter. Following the news, one friend wrote on Facebook: "This is what growing old feels like. Your heroes die". For sure death is inevitable, but how Robin Williams’ characters inspiring messages reverberate in our memories and life decisions depends entirely on us.