The only actor who made Robin Williams “freak out” with jealousy: “It was total consumption”
Comedians have always been known as a self-conscious bunch, which is fair enough when the next big thing permanently looms over the horizon, ready to take their spot. Even though Robin Williams was one of the all-time greats, he still felt one massive pang of jealousy over a pretender to his throne.
Looking at his life and legacy, he needn’t have worried. Williams conquered the stand-up circuit in the late 1970s and was immediately hailed as a generational talent, which he was. When he segued into sitcoms with Mork & Mindy, it was a ratings sensation that won him a Golden Globe.
Admittedly, his life on the big screen didn’t get off to a similarly rapid start. It was a decade after his film debut that he finally found a vehicle worthy of his talents in Barry Levinson’s Good Morning, Vietnam, landing his first Academy Award nomination in the process, and he was a made mad from then on.
His filmography was peppered with the odd flop here and there, but the hits were big enough that they dwarfed the misses. Beyond that, the actor and comedian’s star power, worldwide fame, and enduring appeal ensured that his popularity never diminished, and he was easily capable of weathering the storms of self-doubt that came attached to a box office bomb or critical pariah.
However, one rubber-faced funnyman who exploded almost out of nowhere to reach the stratosphere in record time was viewed as a threat. Until 1994, Jim Carrey was best known as the white guy from In Living Colour. By the end of the year, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber had made him an A-lister who usurped Williams at the top of many studio casting wish lists.
“He chose the thing to do and he’s the master of it,” the Mrs Doubtfire and Dead Poets Society headliner marvelled. “To do that, just straight out. When it works, it just hits you. But when he starts being honoured in France, we’ll know we have to worry.” It was a joke, but it came from a place of genuine concern.
As Cheri Minns, a makeup artist who worked with Williams on a number of pictures, explained: “He got completely freaked out about Jim Carrey, that he was going to take over. Marsha had to step in and tell him, ‘There’s room for other people. You don’t have to freak out. There’s room.'”
Minns, who was the Oscar-winner’s personal makeup artist on over 25 film and television projects from the mid-1990s to his final role in Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, spent more time with him than most of his creative collaborators, and she vividly recalls the anxiety Carrey’s rise was causing him.
“He was having a complete mental breakdown about it,” she said. “Robin had more talent in his little finger than Jim Carrey ever had. But Jim Carrey started making big movies and making a good salary, and then Robin was like, ‘Oh my god’. Robin did that to himself. He just got himself consumed with worry about things like that. It was total consumption with his career.”
Williams kept those feelings private, though, considering he vowed to protect Carrey at all costs as part of the comedic brotherhood when he was being savaged for The Cable Guy. Still, it just goes to show that even the best in their chosen profession aren’t immune to the green-eyed monster.
