Sally Field told a never-before-heard story about her “Mrs. Doubtfire” co-star, the late Robin Williams.
The 77-year-old actress starred alongside Williams in the iconic family comedy in 1993. Thirty years later, Field expressed her appreciation for the actor, who died in 2014 at the age of 63, and revealed in a recent interview with Vanity Fair that she confided in him when her father died.
Field and Williams were filming “Mrs. Doubtfire” when her father died. She refused to stop production because of the personal family matter – until the lead actor and his intuition intervened.
“I’ve never told this story before,” Field said. “I was in the RV outside the courtroom where we were filming the divorce scene. My father had had a stroke a few years ago and was in a nursing home. I got a call from the doctor telling me that my father had died – a massive stroke. He asked if I wanted them to put him on the resuscitator. I said, ‘No, he didn’t want to. Just let him go. And please bend down and say, ‘Sally says goodbye.'”
Field said she was “beside myself” and revealed: “I came on set and tried to act with all my might. I didn’t cry. Robin came over, pulled me off the set and asked, ‘Are you OK?'”
When the actress finally told Williams about her father’s death, he took action.
“Oh my God, we have to get you out of here immediately,” he is said to have replied.
“And he made it happen – they revolved the rest of the day around me,” Field explained. “I was able to go home, call my brother and arrange everything. That’s a side of Robin that people hardly knew: he was very sensitive and intuitive.”
In “Mrs. Doubtfire,” Williams played a father who began disguising himself as a housekeeper so that his estranged wife, played by Field, would hire him and in return he could see their children.
Although the film received only one nomination and one award for Best Makeup at the 66th Academy Awards, it was the second highest-grossing film of 1993, grossing $441 million worldwide.
Field was one of Williams’ many colleagues who shared fond memories of him ahead of the 10th anniversary of his untimely death. Billy Crystal, Matt Damon, Ben Stiller, Al Pacino, Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore were also in attendance.
The two-time Emmy winner took his own life in his California home on August 11, 2014. At the time, it was reported that his death by hanging was the result of severe depression and a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease.
However, the autopsy later revealed that Williams suffered from an undiagnosed, incurable neurological disorder called Lewy Body Dementia. The disease impairs thinking skills, causes visual hallucinations, and behavioral or mood changes.
Williams’ widow, Susan Schneider Williams, addressed the diagnosis in the 2020 documentary “Robin’s Wish.”
“We had unknowingly been battling a deadly disease,” she said in the document. “A disease for which there is no cure. The destruction of Robin’s brain from Lewy Body Disease was one of the worst cases medical professionals have ever seen, yet through it all, his heart remained strong.”
In addition to Susan, Williams left behind three children: Zak, 41, from his first wife, Valerie Velardi; Zelda, 35, and Cody, 31, from his second wife, Marsha Garces.
