The Actor Who Kept Snagging Robin Williams' Dream Villain Roles
Robin Williams was a comedic genius, but he desperately wanted to explore his darker side on screen. One specific actor, however, consistently landed the very parts he craved, pushing him to a breaking point. Discover the story behind his long wait for a villainous turn and who kept getting in his way.
As one of Hollywood's biggest stars, Robin Williams was a performer so singular that scripts were often written just for him. Existing screenplays were frequently reshaped to fit his unique style once he was on board. This was true for his comedies, but many forget he was a powerhouse in dramatic roles too. While his serious performances often had glimmers of his comedic genius, Williams could play it completely straight, ditching improvisation entirely. Director George Roy Hill didn't allow him to go off-script for The World According to Garp, and he felt no need to when working with Christopher Nolan on Insomnia.
A Long-Awaited Dark Turn
That latter film was one part of what the Oscar-winning star called his ‘Triptych of Evil,’ but getting the opportunity took a very long time. Before the turn of the millennium—a period capped by Nolan’s remake, Mark Romanek’s One Hour Photo, and Danny DeVito’s Death to Smoochy—Williams had only one real chance to explore his sinister side on screen. It came in 1996 with an uncredited part in Christopher Hampton’s thriller, The Secret Agent, an opportunity he had already been chasing for years.
The Frustration of Typecasting
The performer's career in the early ’90s was built on a "one for them, one for me" approach. He leaned into his famous persona for movies like Hook, Aladdin, Toys, and Mrs Doubtfire, while also flexing his dramatic muscles in The Fisher King and Awakenings. Yet, he was getting tired of playing goofy protagonists, quippy sidekicks, and one-dimensional man-children. The problem was, whenever he sought out a project that was the total opposite, another name was always ahead of his. “I want to play something nasty,” he revealed to The Independent in 1994. “But no one thinks of me when they want a psychotic guy; Chris Walken gets all those scripts.”
To be fair, few do unhinged better than Walken. Even so, Walken himself has acknowledged that getting so many scripts for crazy characters started to wear on him. These were precisely the parts Williams was desperate to land, but his massive success in comedy meant no one was willing to take a gamble. “If worst comes to worst, I’ll go back on the road and be a stand-up comic, that’s got me through the bad periods before,” he added. “Part therapy, but also, you know, cash. To wait for a role that isn’t necessarily the sweet, likeable guy, that’s a hard call sometimes. They’ll always offer lots of money for certain things, but you can get creamed that way.”
A Gamble That Paid Off
Williams was so set on finding a meatier part to sink his teeth into that he even considered taking a break from Hollywood. He didn't, of course, but he had to wait another five years before the chance he always wanted finally came his way. When it did, he hit it out of the park, proving that his turn to the dark side should have happened long before One Hour Photo.