He wrote and directed Withnail and I (1987), a film with comic and tragic elements set in London in the late 1960s, which drew on his experiences as a struggling actor, living in poverty in Camden Town.

His parents were Mabel Robinson and American lawyer Carl Casriel, who had a short-term relationship during World War II.

[2] As a child, Robinson was constantly brutally abused by his stepfather Rob (an ex RAF navigator and a wholesale newsagent), who knew the boy was not his son.

He then appeared in Ken Russell's The Music Lovers (1970), Barney Platts-Mills's Private Road (1971) and François Truffaut's The Story of Adèle H. (1975).

Robinson's next two outings as a director (How to Get Ahead in Advertising, teaming him again with Richard E. Grant, and Jennifer 8, a Hollywood thriller) were not as well received.

He wrote the screenplays for the films Return to Paradise (1998) and In Dreams (1999), but both were altered drastically by their producers, leaving Robinson once again disappointed.

[7] Robinson eventually returned to directing with an adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's novel The Rum Diary, with the main role performed by Johnny Depp.

In 2012, Robinson's comic novella Paranoia in the Launderette was substantially filled out and adapted for the screen as A Fantastic Fear of Everything starring Simon Pegg.