Ethan Hawke Says Robin Williams Taught Him a Valuable Lesson About Acting

Ethan Hawke is remembering the late Robin Williams, with whom he co-starred in the 1989 film, Dead Poet’s Society.

Williams gave one of the most iconic performances of his celebrated career in the film in which he played John Keating, an eccentric English professor at an all-boys school who develops a deep bond with his students.

Hawke — who was only 18 when the movie premiered — plays Todd Anderson, who kicks the whole story off when he starts attending the school.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, Hawke, 56, said that directing Williams was “not an easy thing to do” for the film’s director Peter Weir, because “Robin is a comic genius.”

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“But dramatic acting was still new to Robin at that time,” Hawke added. “And watching that relationship like, in the room — I was four feet away while they’re talking about performance — and that was something you don’t un-see.”

Hawke further recounted how Williams worked on the film, saying, “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 that was a new door that was opened to my brain, that you could play like that.”

“And Peter liked it, as long as we still achieved the same goals that the script had,” Hawke said, adding that Weir and Williams “had a very different way of working, but they didn’t judge one another or resist one another.”

Hawke continued: “They worked with each other. That’s exciting — that’s when you get at the stuff of what great collaboration can do ,,, You don’t have to be the same — you don’t have to hate somebody for being different than you are. And then the collective imagination can become very, very powerful, because the movie becomes bigger that one person’s point of view. it’s containing multiple perspectives.”

Williams would go on to become one of the world’s most beloved icons. After struggling with an undiagnosed case of the debilitating brain disorder Lewy Body Dementia (LBD), the prolific actor and comedian died by suicide at age 63 on Aug. 11, 2014, at his Paradise Cay mansion in San Francisco.

Hawke, meanwhile, is currently starring in the film Blue Moon, directed by Richard Linklater and also starring Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale and Andrew Scott. According to a synopsis, the film finds “legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart (Hawke) bravely facing the future as his professional and private life unravel at the opening night party for his former partner’s hit show Oklahoma!”

The actor married wife Ryan in 2008. They share Clementine, 17, and Indiana, 14, and Hawke is also dad to Maya, 27, and Levon, 23, with ex-wife Uma Thurman.