‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’ Animator Richard Williams Passes Away

Acclaimed animator Richard Williams, who worked on hit films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and the Pink Panther, has sadly passed away. Williams an Oscar and Bafta Winner was 86 years old, he died at his home in Bristol on Friday, his family announced. Natasha Sutton Williams said her father had been suffering from cancer, in what she said had been quite a swift illness. Williams was the animation director on the 1988 released Who Framed Roger Rabbit? And is credited with creating the now-iconic characters including Roger and Jessica Rabbit. Williams won two Oscars and a Bafta for his work on the film that starred the late Bob Hoskins and Christopher Lloyd. He credited Walt Disney’s classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which he saw at the age of 5, as having a tremendous impact on him, and his dream of one day becoming a voice actor and animator. “I always wanted, when I was a kid, to get to Disney. I was a clever little fellow so I took my drawings and I eventually got in,” Williams told the BBC in 2008. “They did a story on me, and I was in there for two days, which you can imagine what it was like for a kid.” During his lengthy career, Williams also wrote a how-to book called The Animator’s Survival Kit and was animating and writing until the day he died. We here at The DisInsider offer our condolences to the friends and family of Williams at this time.