The “perfect” role Robin Williams couldn’t turn down: “It’s absurd to pass it up”
There was no master plan behind Robin Williams‘ career, although it can’t be overlooked that his first brush with acclaimed and awards-worthy drama saw the career comedian get serious on a regular basis more often than he ever had before.
The catalyst was Barry Levinson’s Good Morning, Vietnam, which won him a Golden Globe for ‘Best Actor – Musical or Comedy’ and landed him his first Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Actor’. It was a movie he desperately needed, with Williams finally proving his worth as a big-screen leading man.
From then on, straight-laced roles became more pronounced in his filmography. His next outing, apart from an uncredited cameo in Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, was another Oscar-nominated turn in Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society, not that he’d ever dream of abandoning his first love.
For every Good Will Hunting, there was a Flubber released in the same year. For every The Night Listener, there was an RV. For every The Fisher King, there was a Hook. It was a pattern that would define Williams for his final three and a half decades; alternating between drama and comedy, all while reaffirming himself as one of his generation’s best at both.
For a while, though, there were whispers that he might permanently abscond from making audiences laugh. It’s easy to see why, when Good Morning, Vietnam, Dead Poets Society, and Penny Marshall’s Awakenings were three of the four leading roles he played in succession, Roger Donaldson’s Cadillac Man being the exception, but Williams was at pains to explain that it was all about the material.
“You have something like this come along, it’s absurd to pass it up,” he told Chuck Davis, handily clarifying why he’d agreed to star opposite Robert De Niro in the biographical drama based on Oliver Sack’s book of the same name. “When you read something that’s this powerful, I’ll take the chance.”
They may not have the same name, but Williams’ Malcolm Sayer is the Sacks surrogate, a doctor who embarks upon pioneering treatment for catatonic patients. One of them is De Niro’s Leonard Lowe, and despite breaking the legend’s nose during production, the former couldn’t speak higher of the latter as a scene partner and collaborator, crediting him with nailing the film’s delicate tonal balance.
“Even when you’re supposed to be in a catatonic state, you can overact,” Williams reasoned. “People can spot that. I knew the first day Bobby spoke, I knew it was the perfect tone. He knew exactly… it was there. I knew that it would work. It was like a laser gun.”
Awakenings was well received by critics and turned a decent profit in cinemas, while the two leads were recognised for their performances, albeit in different guises. Williams notched a Golden Globe nod for ‘Best Actor – Comedy or Musical’, and De Niro shared the spoils by securing an Oscar nomination for ‘Best Actor’. Neither of them won, but that wasn’t why they wanted to make it, and Williams knew he couldn’t turn it down from the moment he read the script.
