Robin Williams didn’t follow the script Society of Dead Poets.
The late Hollywood star led the cast of the 1989 coming-of-age drama as English teacher John Keating and Ethan Hawke – who was a teenager when he played student Todd Anderson – recalled the challenges director Peter Weir faced as Williams was all about deviating from the script.
In a career retrospective interview with Vanity FairEthan said: “Robin is a comedic genius. But dramatic acting was still new to Robin at that time.”
“And watching that relationship in the room — I was on all fours while they were talking about performance — and it was something you can’t unsee. Robin Williams didn’t do the script, and I didn’t know you could do that. If he had an idea, he just did it. He didn’t ask permission. And it was a new door that opened in my brain, that you could perform like that,” he explained.
Ethan was particularly impressed by how Robin – who committed suicide in 2014 – and Weir worked together despite their contrasting working methods.
The 54-year-old star said: “They worked together. It’s exciting, that’s where you find out what a great collaboration can do.”
“You don’t have to be the same, you don’t have to hate someone because they’re different from you. And then the collective imagination can become very, very powerful, because the film becomes bigger than one person’s point of view. It contains multiple perspectives,” Ethan concluded.
