The actor Robin Williams called a master of comedy: “When it works, it just hits you”
If you asked any comedian whose admiration would have meant the most to them, many would say Robin Williams. It’s hard to think of a more beloved figure in the entertainment industry, even a decade after his untimely death. He and Tom Hanks might have duked it out over who was the most adored A-lister, but more likely than not, Hanks would have handed the distinction to Williams on a silver platter, no boxing gloves necessary.
Throughout his career, Williams moved from stand-up comedy to sitcoms and from comedic movies to darkly serious ones. He even earned four Oscar nominations and won in 1998 for his role as a kind psychology professor in Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting. It seemed that there was nothing he couldn’t do, whether he was wildly riffing while impersonating Barry White in an animated penguin movie or inspiring a group of repressed teenage boys to embrace poetry.
For any actor, praise from Williams would be akin to winning an award, but for a comedian, that was especially the case. Williams didn’t go around endorsing people like some kind of Hollywood politician, but there was one actor who he singled out during a 1996 interview with Premiere Magazine: Jim Carrey.
Revealing that he went to see Dumb and Dumber with his kids during a trip to Hawaii, Williams said, “He’s funny in a physical – you know, he chose the thing to do and he’s the master of it. To do that just straight out. When it works, it just hits you.”
The crux of Carrey’s talent, according to Williams, wasn’t just the physicality but the complete uninhibitedness of it. “It’s absolute commitment to it,” he said. “There’s no comment on it. It’s the pure fucking energy of it!”
There is no irony or self-deprecation about the way Carrey does comedy. He doesn’t try to have his cake and eat it too by offering a knowing wink to the audience when he tells a bad joke – he just leans into the punchline harder until you have no choice but to cave into laughter. While other comedians deal in cynicism and deadpan humour, Carrey opts for a relentless, larger-than-life brand of comedy.
At the time Williams spoke about him in the interview, Carrey had just broken through into the mainstream. After several years on the sketch series In Living Color, he starred in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber, all within 1994. Few performers have enjoyed such an explosive debut to cinema audiences, which fit Carrey’s feverish energy perfectly.
What audiences and Williams did not know at the time was that Carrey would prove to be similar to the Mrs Doubtfire star in his ability to switch to dramatic roles. The Truman Show, Man on the Moon, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind proved that he could tone down his madcap comedy and deliver muted, moving portrayals of complicated figures. Although he’s never been nominated for an Oscar, it’s reasonable to assume that he could be if he made it a priority.
