“One of the greatest portrayals ever”: the performance Robin Williams admired
No matter how hard any actor tries, it’s impossible to give an iconic performance on purpose. It’s something that comes naturally, and Robin Williams was responsible for more than one.
Whether it’s Dead Poets Society, Mrs Doubtfire, Aladdin, Good Morning, Vietnam, or any of his other standout turns, they may not be remembered as some of the finest work ever committed to cinema history, but all of those examples are indisputably iconic in their own right.
Williams himself was an icon, becoming one of his era’s most beloved stars who mastered stand-up comedy, improvisational acting, and drama with the greatest of ease, making him one of the most effortlessly and naturally gifted performers modern Hollywood has seen, and many of his films will continue to be revisited for generations to come.
One of the easiest ways to sum up the funnyman’s uniqueness is that whenever a new star comes along who bears even a passing physical or performative resemblance to somebody else, they’re always dubbed ‘the new’ whoever. Nobody has ever been called the new Robin Williams because he’s one of a kind, and unless something drastic changes, nobody ever will.
Fittingly, then, it was another unique actor who built their career on specificity who blew the Academy Award winner away with their signature performance, using it as a springboard to success that saw them subsequently star in several ‘Golden Age’ masterpieces when they found themselves in need of a character man who filled a very specific niche.
“One of my favourite actors of all time, although he doesn’t necessarily play villains, is Peter Lorre,” Williams shared. “I once asked him, ‘Mr Lorre, what is it like to act?’ And he says, ‘I don’t act, I just make faces’. But him, with those eyes, him in M, oh god, that’s one of the greatest portrayals ever.”
In only his third feature, Fritz Lang’s innovative mystery thriller cast Lorre, who’d previously been known primarily for comedy, as serial killer Hans Beckert. He was so good that he faced an uphill battle to avoid being typecast forever, but it did lead to notable roles in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, Passage to Marseille, and more.
Movies like One Hour Photo and Insomnia saw Williams channel that spirit by discarding his comedy background to play chilling characters, and he paid tribute to Lorre by incorporating an impression of him into his routine as the Genie in Disney’s animated classic.
