Why Jeff Bridges didn’t want to work with Robin Williams: “I imagined he’d be fucking around with me”
A recurring concern for any actor tasked with playing the straight man opposite a freewheeling comedy star is that a scene-stealing performance will upstage them. That fear only increases when the movie in question isn’t designed explicitly to have audiences rolling in the aisles, which left Jeff Bridges feeling increasingly wary.
Although he’s shown multiple times throughout his storied career that he can be hilarious, Bridges’ humour has always been derived from his dry, deadpan, and laconic delivery, which always arrives with a twinkle in his eye. He’s neither a ham nor a physical comedian or pratfalling expert, leaving him trepidatious at the prospect of sharing the screen with Robin Williams.
Already a legend of the stand-up circuit before he’d even turned his hand to cinema, Williams was famed for being a force of nature. He was quick-witted, prone to going on heavily improvised tangents, and loved deviating from the script to set off on one of his signature riffs. It worked to the benefit of many films, but Bridges wasn’t so sure it would have the same effect on the one they made together.
Of course, Williams is arguably the best there’s ever been when it comes to comedic powerhouses who were equally adept and comfortable at doing dramatic heavy lifting. Still, his co-star didn’t know that at the time. Sharing a set for Terry Gilliam’s fantastical dramedy The Fisher King, Bridges was worried that he would be blown off the screen and made to look like a fool.
“I was originally concerned about Robin Williams,” he confessed to The Hollywood Reporter. “He’s a comedian, and I imagined that he’d be fucking around with me. But he was just the opposite. He was so supportive. My perception before the movie was different than at the end. At the end, I perceived him as an incredible actor who just so happens to have that comedy thing in his kit bag.”
Playing a shock jock plunged to his lowest ebb when he inadvertently eggs a caller into committing murder, Bridges’ Jack Lucas tries to drown his sorrows in alcohol until Williams’ homeless Parry Sagan becomes an unlikely friend. Together, they set out on a quest to find the Holy Grail, and several important life lessons are invariably learned along the way.
Ironically, despite his suspicions that Williams would lean too heavily into his comedic bag of tricks on The Fisher King, he was the one out of the central pairing who earned an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Actor’. They both made the shortlist for ‘Best Actor – Musical or Comedy’ at the Golden Globes, but once again, Bridges was left on the outside looking in after Williams claimed the prize.
