Matthew Lawrence has hailed Robin Williams as being the “opposite” of a typical celebrity as he reveals the life lessons he picked up from his tragic ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ co-star.
Matthew Lawrence has hailed Robin Williams as being the “opposite” of a typical celebrity.
The 44-year-old actor appeared opposite the late Hollywood star – who took his own life August 2014 at the age of 63 – in the 1993 comedy Mrs. Doubtfire’ and has recalled the lessons he learned from his on-screen parents that he has carried on into his adult life.
Speaking as part of a panel at 90s Con in Daytona Beach, Florida, he said: “Getting to work with Robin Williams and Sally Field, I almost didn’t realize it at the time when I was there, but it has carried over in my entire life.
“You hear all these stories about celebrities — they don’t want the crew to talk to them or look them in the eye.
“But Robin was just the opposite. He knew everybody’s name, he was compassionate about everybody and he really understood the meaning of, ‘You have to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.’ There was no hierarchy for him: the guy running the craft services table was just as important as the director.’
“Seeing that at such a young age, that when you are at the top of your game you treat people really well — you emulate that.”
His comments come just after actress Sally Field – who played Robin’s estranged wife in the film that followed a man who impersonated a nanny in an attempt to see his children – remembered her tragic co-star as a “very sensitive and intuitive” person who made arrangements when she went through a personal struggle on set.
when she received the news that her father had died and recalled how her co-star made arrangements so she could leave the set.
She told Vanity Fair: “I never shared this story before. I was in the camper outside of the courtroom where we were shooting the divorce scene. My father had a stroke a couple of years before, and was in a nursing facility. I got a phone call from the doctor saying my father had passed — a massive stroke. He asked if I wanted them to put him on the resuscitator. I said, ‘No, he did not want that. Just let him go. And please lean down and say, ‘Sally says goodbye.’
“I was of course beside myself. I came on the set trying with all my might to act. I wasn’t crying. Robin came over, pulled me out of the set, and asked, ‘Are you OK?’
“[I told him and] he said ‘Oh my God, we need to get you out here right now…’ And he made it happen — they shot around me the rest of the day. I could go back to my house, call my brother and make arrangements. It’s a side of Robin that people rarely knew: He was very sensitive and intuitive.”
Mrs. Doubtfire star Matthew Lawrence reveals life lessons he learned from Robin Williams
