Sally Field recently told Vanity Fair that Robin Williams had arranged for her to leave the set of Mrs. Doubtfire when her father died during filming. Field hadn't planned to disrupt production because of the personal matter, but Williams realized there was something off about his co-star, and asked director Chris Columbus to change the shooting order so the production could film near Field for a day.
“I’ve never talked about this story before,” Field said. “I was in a camper outside the courthouse where we were filming the divorce scene. My father had had a stroke two years earlier, and he was in a nursing home. I got a phone call from the doctor saying my father had died, of a massive stroke. He asked me if I wanted to put him on life support. I said, ‘No, he didn’t want that. Just let him go. And please bend over and say, “Sally says goodbye.”’ ”
“I was out of control, of course,” Field continued. “I walked onto the set trying as hard as I could to act. I wasn’t crying. Robin came in, pulled me off the set, and said, ‘Are you okay?’
When Field finally told Williams her father was dead, she recalled Williams responding, “Oh my God, we need to get you out here now.”
“He made it happen, and they kept filming around me the rest of the day,” Field said. “I was able to get home, call my brother, and make arrangements. It’s a side of Robin that people rarely get to know: He was very sensitive and intuitive.”
Williams had an impact on the lives of many of her co-stars while filming “Mrs. Doubtfire.” Lisa Jacob, who was a teenager when she played Williams’s character’s eldest daughter in the film, told Fox News Digital earlier this year that Williams was the first person to openly talk to her about her mental health struggles when they worked together on “Mrs. Doubtfire.”
“He was talking to me about his struggles and the things he had been through,” Jacob said. “And that was the first time I felt like I wasn’t a stranger. I didn’t have to hide it from myself. It’s just something that some of us have to deal with.”
Williams starred in Mrs. Doubtfire as a father who decides to dress as a housekeeper so he can work for his estranged wife and see his children. The film was the second-highest-grossing film of 1993, grossing $441 million worldwide.
During a May interview on the “Brotherly Love” podcast, Jacob also shared how Williams tried to help her when she was kicked out of high school for taking time off to film “Mrs. Doubtfire.”
“The amazing thing was that Robin noticed my discomfort and asked me what was going on,” Jacob said. “He wrote a letter to my manager saying he wanted them to reconsider this decision and that I was just trying to pursue my education and my career at the same time, and asked if they could please support me in this. The manager took the letter, framed it, put it in his office, and didn’t ask me to come back. It’s amazing.”
Visit Vanity Fair to read more from Field.
