When Robin Williams’ dream came true: “Even better than dancing with Fred Astaire”
Some things just come naturally to a person. We talk a lot about how talent is a muscle that needs to be worked, but sometimes that isn’t true. On rare and sparkling occasions, a person’s talent is as easy and natural to them as breathing – and Robin Williams witnessed it.
There’s a case to be made that Williams also embodied it. Head to YouTube and search ‘Robin Williams audition’ if you want a few examples. He drops into character for the Genie in Aladdin in an instant, not needing the time and work and development that many others would still require even after getting the role. Or in the screen tests for Mrs Doubtfire, Williams already has everything nailed, from the movements to the voice.
It seemed that everyone always knew Williams would be something special. His high school shows were so good that he bagged himself a full-ride scholarship to the elite Juilliard School, specifically picked by John Houseman to be admitted into the advanced programme as a further honour from a school immediately intent on nurturing the spark they saw.
But mostly, what people seemed to see was a natural flare. His classmate, Christopher Reeves, recalled that, stating, “I’d never seen so much energy contained in one person. He was like an untied balloon that had been inflated and immediately released. I watched in awe as he virtually caromed off the walls of the classrooms and hallways. To say that he was ‘on’ would be a major understatement.”
Elsewhere, he had teachers straight up label him a “genius”.
Aptly, the descriptions of Williams at work seem to perfectly mirror the actor’s own comments about one of his own heroes, and the experience of witnessing a true master work with natural ease.
Talking about the comedian Jonathan Winters, who he worked with on Mork & Mindy, Williams said, “I believe I said in the Academy Awards it was like dancing with Fred Astaire but it was even better than that.”
Likening anyone to Astaire is essentially assigning them the ultimate pinnacle of talent. Astaire’s dancing was so perfected that he basically became a metaphor for it, becoming an idiom used to describe pure, natural talent. So for Williams to say Winters was ever better, that’s praise on a whole new level.
“He would perform for anybody. There was no audience too small. I think I once saw him do a cat for a beagle,” Williams continued, remembering how Winters never once tired of making people laugh. It’s similar to Reeves’ experience of Williams, or the countless other moving tributes that flooded in, celebrating Williams’ giving nature and joy to be around after the actor sadly passed in 2014.
As the experience that launched Williams’ career, it was inevitable that his time spent working with Winters would forever be a highlight. But to him, it was more than just a TV show that made his name, and more than a chance to work with established names. Instead, it was a chance to watch a master a work and learn from the best of them.
