Robards was born July 26, 1922, in Chicago, the son of Hope Maxine (née Glanville) Robards and Jason Robards, Sr., an actor who regularly appeared on the stage and in such early films as The Gamblers (1929). Robards was of German, English, Welsh, Irish, and Swedish descent.

The teenage Robards excelled in athletics, running a 4:18-mile during his junior year at Hollywood High School in Los Angeles. Although his prowess in Sports attracted interest from several universities, Robards decided to enlist in the United States Navy upon his graduation in 1940.

Robards played three different U.S. Presidents in film. He played the role of Abraham Lincoln in the TV movie The Perfect Tribute (1991) and supplied the voice for two television documentaries, first for "The Presidency: A Splendid Misery" in 1964, and then again in the title role of the 1992 documentary miniseries Lincoln. He also played the role of Ulysses S. Grant in The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981) and supplied the Union General's voice in the PBS miniseries The Civil War (1990). He also played Franklin D. Roosevelt in FDR: The Final Years (1980). Robards also played in the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!, a depiction of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 that led the United States into World War II.

During the Battle of Tassafaronga in the waters north of Guadalcanal on the night of November 30, 1942, Northampton was sunk by hits from two Japanese torpedoes. Robards found himself treading water until near daybreak, when he was rescued by an American destroyer. For her Service in the war, Northampton was awarded six battle stars.

Two years later, in November 1944, Robards was radioman aboard the light cruiser USS Nashville, the flagship for the invasion of Mindoro in the northern Philippines. On December 13, she was struck by a kamikaze aircraft off Negros Island in the Philippines. The aircraft hit one of the port five-inch gun mounts, while the plane's two bombs set the midsection of the ship ablaze. With this damage and 223 casualties, Nashville was forced to return to Pearl Harbor and then to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington, for repairs.

He made his film debut in the two-reel comedy Follow That Music (1947), but after his Broadway success, he was invited to make his feature debut in The Journey (1959). He became a familiar face to movie audiences throughout the 1960s, notably for his performances in A Thousand Clowns (1965) repeating his stage performance, Hour of the Gun as Doc Holliday (1967), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968), and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).

He appeared on television anthology series, including two segments in the mid-1950s of CBS's Appointment with Adventure.

Robards had six children from his four marriages, including actor Jason Robards III and two others with his first wife, Eleanor Pittman; actor Sam Robards with his third wife, Actress Lauren Bacall, to whom he was married in 1961. They divorced in 1969, in part because of his alcoholism. Robards had two more children with his fourth wife (widow), Lois O'Connor.

In 1972, he was seriously injured in an automobile accident when he drove his car into the side of a mountain on a winding California road, requiring extensive surgery and facial reconstruction. The accident may have been related to his longtime struggle with alcoholism. Robards overcame his addiction and went on to publicly campaign for alcoholism awareness.

He received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in consecutive years: for All the President's Men (1976), portraying Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee, and for Julia (1977), portraying Writer Dashiell Hammett (1977). He was also nominated for another Academy Award for his role as Howard Hughes in Melvin and Howard (1980).

Jason Robards is in the American Theater Hall of Fame; he was inducted in 1979.

Robards also appeared onstage in a revival of O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! (1988) directed by Arvin Brown, as well as Lillian Hellman's Toys in the Attic (1960), Arthur Miller's After the Fall (1964), Clifford Odets's The Country Girl (1972), and Harold Pinter's No Man's Land (1994).

Robards voiced a number of documentaries, including Ken Burns' Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio (1991).

Jason Robards narrated the public radio documentary, Schizophrenia: Voices of an Illness, produced by Lichtenstein Creative Media, which was awarded a 1994 George Foster Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcasting. According to Time, Robards offered to narrate the schizophrenia program, saying that his first wife had been institutionalized for that illness.

In 1997, Robards received the U.S. National Medal of Arts, the highest honor conferred to an individual Artist on behalf of the people. Recipients are selected by the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts and the medal is awarded by the President of the United States.

In 1999, he was among the recipients at the Kennedy Center Honors, an annual honor given to those in the performing arts for their lifetime of contributions to American culture.

Robards was a resident of the Southport section of Fairfield, Connecticut. He died of lung cancer in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on December 26, 2000, at the age of 78. He was cremated.

Source: "Jason Robards". IMDb. Retrieved October 22, 2013.