Robin Williams was a national treasure. Time and time again he proved himself to be a sweet, funny man who brought smiles to people across the world, not just through his films but through his personal acts of kindness .
After his passing, many costars and others who worked with him told stories of times he proved himself to be a stellar guy. Here are some of those stories.
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Teaching someone how to meditate.
When filming Jumanji , child actor Bradley Pierce had to spend many hours in the makeup chair being dressed in prosthetics. To help him deal with that, Williams taught him to meditate.
“Robin would come in and he would sit in the make up trailer and keep me company. He had gone through all of the various stages of prosthetic make up for Mrs. Doubtfire not long beforehand, so being familiar with the challenges he was able to talk me through meditations, ways to calm yourself. There are very few actors who would go out of their way in the way he did. I think it was part of Williams’ nature to be generous, kind and caring,” he said in an interview with inews .
Supporting a costar who got expelled.
Lisa Jakub played Lydia Hillard in Mrs. Doubtfire , eldest daughter of Williams’ character. She was still attending high school while filming but was expelled for not attending class enough.
When Williams heard about this, he wrote a letter to the principal, saying Jakub was a “bright, inquisitive, and an eager to learn young lady” who would be “an asset to any classroom” and urged them to reconsider her expulsion. When speaking to The Independent , Jakub explained how much this meant to her, saying that letter “changed her life” as it taught her to “stand up for the things that matter.”
Gifting a fellow actor a poetry book.
Dante Basco played Rufio, leader of the lost boys, in Hook . In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter , Basco explained how deep of an impact Williams’ presence had on him.
“He was just a warm and welcoming spirit, and that, for me, will live forever. My favorite movie going into the film was Dead Poets Society , and we spent hours on end, away from everyone else, just getting ready in the morning, talking about poetry. […] He ended up giving me Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass , this really beautiful leather-bound book for my wrap present […].”
Gave a direct recommendation to his agent.
Speaking of Dead Poets Society , actor Ethan Hawke spoke about Williams during an episode of Conan , how Williams would tease him but ultimately helped him gain representation.
“He’d be making fun of me, call me a wet rag, saying ‘Oh, Mr. Hawke doesn’t think it’s funny,’ and he would like, bow down and I’m like, ‘I’m just trying to stay in character dude, leave me alone!’ […] the movie ended, and I got this call and they said, ‘Hey, I’m Robin Williams’s agent, and he says that you’re really good and that you need an agent.’ And so Robin helped me get my very first agent, and he hooked me up.”
Performing an impromptu comedy set while filming.
While shooting the park scene in Good Will Hunting , Williams put the time between takes to good use, as explained by costar Minnie Driver to Andy Cohen during an episode of Watch What Happens Live .
“[…] watching Matt [Damon] and Ben [Affleck] shoot that park bench scene [with Williams], and it was really beautiful. He did this amazing impromptu stand-up routine to all the people eating their sandwiches on the common and people coming out of buildings because they heard he was doing this. At the end of lunch there were about 300 people. He was a good man.”
Calming a comedian before their set.
Norm Macdonald had an upcoming set on the Late Show with David Letterman , directly following Williams’ own performance. In a Twitter thread, Macdonald explained the impressions Williams started doing to make him laugh and calm him down.
“He was a jewish tailor, taking my measurements. He went down on his knees, asked which way I dressed. I told my friend on the phone that the funniest man in the world was on his knees before me, measuring my inseam. My friend didn’t believe me so I said, ‘Could you talk to my friend, sir.’ The funniest man in the world took the phone and for ten minutes took my friend’s Chinese food order. I laughed and laughed and it was like I was in a dream because no one else was there. No one.”
Entertaining the child actors on the set of *Mrs. Doubtfire*.
Mara Wilson’s breakthrough role was Natalie Hillard, the youngest daughter of Williams’ character in the film. She wrote a piece about him on her blog in 2014 after his passing.
“Robin would do anything to make me and the other kids laugh. Those hand puppets that dance alongside the genie in Aladdin’s ‘Friend Like Me’? That must have been his suggestion, because Robin made those in real life. He’d break them out between takes to entertain us between takes. […] He seemed to know instinctively what we would find funny, and never had to resort to saying anything that was inappropriate for children. He was, after all, a father himself.”
Caring for the children in *Patch Adams*.
Patch Adams had plenty of patient actors who were fighting cancer during filming. One of those actors, Cameron Brooke Stanley, spoke to ABC News in 2014 about how nice Williams was on set.
“He was such a real person so when, even off the set when we weren’t filming, he was just trying to hang out with the kids and trying to make us forget that we were sick… He didn’t really act like this big star. He just acted like one of us. […] Not just when the cameras are on, when they’re off, he just wants to be someone’s friend, like a best friend. He wants to make someone laugh that’s sad. He was just so wonderful.”
He teared up when reuniting with an early costar.
Mork & Mindy starred Robin Williams and Pam Dawber as Mork and Mindy respectively. While Dawber distanced herself from Hollywood after the show’s run, the producers of another one of Williams’ shows, The Crazy Ones reached out to her in early 2014 and asked her to make a cameo appearance.
The cameo was a surprise , one that truly shocked Williams. Writer-producer Tracy Poust said Williams got ‘misty-eyed’ when Dawber signed onto the show.
“I don’t know what it is about the two of us, but I have just loved him on a very deep level,” Dawber said. “Robin is truly one of the kindest, most caring people I’ve ever met.”
In fact, his *Mork & Mindy audition was something else.
The show’s producer, Garry Marshall, wrote a memoir titled _ My Happy Days in Hollywood_ in which he talks about Williams. He came recommended by Marshall’s sister who had noticed Williams as a street performer.
“The next week I walked into my office and the street performer [Williams] was sitting on my couch upside down on his head. When he saw me, he stood straight up, and started pretending to drink a glass of water with his finger. This is how I first met Robin Williams. Ronny [a friend] was right. Iezman [another colleague] was right. He was special.”
