The one line that links four Robin Williams movies
There are a few actors who quite simply define the eras they performed during. Take Marlon Brando, who lit up the 1970s with his psychologically haunting performances in Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather and Apocalypse Now, or Jim Carrey, who dominated comedy in the 1990s with his frenetic sense of humour. Similarly, Robin Williams became a beloved icon of cinema during the tail-end of the 20th century thanks to a number of touching performances that created mythos around the actor himself.
Making his debut on the small screen in the late 1970s, Williams wouldn’t emerge as a significant industry talent until the following decade when he thrived alongside Pam Dawber in the TV comedy Mork & Mindy. It was around the same time that the acclaimed filmmaker Robert Altman saw Williams as the perfect person to play Popeye, casting him in his curious 1980 movie named after the character as the actor entered the mainstream.
Williams steadily maintained success throughout the decade, taking a number of roles in such acclaimed films as Barry Levinson’s Good Morning Vietnam and Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society before entering the 1990s as a bonafide star. Maintaining a family-friendly persona and chipper sense of humour, Williams became an effortless industry favourite, but his characters were often tinged with melancholy, offering a glimpse into the life behind the mask.
One phrase that went on to define the actor, who tragically died in 2014, was “Carpe Diem. Seize the Day”, a line that was best known from his performance in Weir’s philosophical drama Dead Poets Society, yet also links three other movies together.
The line first appeared in the 1986 movie Seize the Day by director Fielder Cook, which told the story of Tommy Wilhelm (Williams), an honest man who has fallen on hard times and is looking for a way out of psychological torment. As well as the phrase being the titular subject of the movie, it is also uttered by him and co-star Jerry Stiller during one scene.
Three years later and Weir’s Dead Poets Society was released, making the quote famous, with fans associating its optimistic energy with Williams’ own spritely energy.
The final two references to ‘seizing the day’ came in the early 1990s, with Arthur Malet’s Tootles delivering the line to Williams in Steven Spielberg’s Hook in 1991. Flying outside the window of his home, Tootles shrills, “seize the day” to Williams and the other onlookers, whilst just two years later, the phrase would be heard for the final time in his filmography during 1993’s Mrs. Doubtfire.
Using a variation of the phrase in the film that follows an actor who disguises himself as a female housekeeper to keep in contact with his children, Williams utters the phrase when his character’s teeth fall into her glass of water, prompting him to say, “carpe dentum, seize the teeth”.
Linking four of his movies together whilst also acting as a mantra for the way in which the man himself loved to live his life, ‘seize the day’ perfectly summarises the life of Willaims, one of Hollywood’s most beloved icons.
