Robin Williams, in the Moment

Feb. 25, 2011— -- Talking with Academy Award-winning actor Robin Williams can feel like a mental workout.

During an interview with ABC News' Bill Weir, the comedic actor's brain seemed to work in spurts as he changed subjects and slipped into various voices or characters. It's this special talent that has earned him an Oscar, several Grammys and soldout shows on his stand-up comedy tours.

In his current -- and first -- foray on Broadway, he plays the central character in "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo," for the next 5½ months.

"My character is a Bengal tiger, who starts out in the zoo and eventually gets killed and becomes a ghost," Williams told "Nightline." "Basically, it's like 'Waiting for Godot' in Iraq."

Now residing near San Francisco, Williams, 59, began his career in the 1970s doing stand-up. He draws his stand-up material, he said, from various moments happening around him, from conversations with people to current events, including the upcoming Oscars.

"When you go out on stand-up, you do like at least a month of just starting off with a base and then as you go out, things will appear in the news, things will happen," he said. "It's weird with 'The King's Speech,' after watching the K-k-k-k-king's Speech and thinking if Hitler had an impediment, we wouldn't have had a problem."

Or, Williams said, he'll come up with material from his own life, such as the open-heart surgery he underwent in 2009.

"After surgery you come up with a whole other thing about what life is and the idea of what surgery was," he said. "The idea of heart failure, the idea of, with all these genetic replacements and genetic enhancements ... eventually it will be like, 'Gil, did you take drugs? You just went 100 meters in 3 seconds.' 'I know it's weird isn't it?'"

After falling in love with drama in high school, Williams attended the Julliard School in New York City in 1973 but left in 1976 to move to Los Angeles. It was there that he landed his big break as the alien Mork in the popular TV sitcom "Mork and Mindy," which ran from 1978 to 1982.