Robin Williams Broke All the Rules for His Most Magical Role: He Didn’t Ask Permission
At 18 on the Dead Poets Society set, Ethan Hawke watched Robin Williams ditch the gags and defy Hollywood’s playbook, disappearing so completely into character that the laughs stopped—and a young co-star’s idea of acting changed for good.
Here’s a bit of behind-the-scenes movie lore I love: Ethan Hawke was 18 on the set of Dead Poets Society and watched Robin Williams toss out the usual rules about sticking to the script. Not to riff and crack jokes, but to make the drama hit harder. It surprised him. It kind of re-wired him.
Hawke on watching Robin Williams rewrite the rules
In a Vanity Fair video, Hawke says Williams wasn’t leaning on his stand-up superpowers. Instead, he’d follow an instinct mid-scene, chase an idea, and not wait for permission. For a young actor used to doing exactly what’s on the page, that was a shock to the system—in a good way.
"Robin is a comic genius. But dramatic acting was still new to Robin at that time. Robin 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 no, this wasn’t chaos. No one on set was grousing about it. The consensus was that his improvising didn’t derail scenes—it lifted them. The whole point was to keep the emotion intact without getting showy, and Williams kept the needle exactly where it needed to be.
Why it worked: collaboration, not disruption
Director Peter Weir was game as long as each scene still landed the beats Tom Schulman’s script called for. Hawke says the push-and-pull actually made the movie better—different approaches working in concert until the film’s imagination felt bigger than any one person’s. That’s the sweet spot: you can keep the heart of the script and still let a once-in-a-generation performer find new colors inside it.
The role that made people look twice at Williams
Williams had already shown range—there’s real weight in The World According to Garp, and Mrs. Doubtfire isn’t just gags—but Dead Poets Society forced audiences to see past the obvious. He’s playing John Keating, a teacher who blows open a bunch of prep-school minds, and he threads a fine needle: a touch of comic electricity without puncturing the drama.
Not everyone loved everything about the movie. Roger Ebert admired the craft but thought the story bent itself around Keating a bit too neatly, writing that "Keating is more of a plot device than a human being." Fair critique, and honestly, it highlights what Williams pulls off: even with those built-in story seams, he makes Keating feel alive and inspiring, not just a screenwriter’s idea of inspiring.
The essentials
- Year: 1989
- Director: Peter Weir
- Screenplay: Tom Schulman
- Cast: Robin Williams, Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard, Josh Charles, Gale Hansen, Dylan Kussman, Kurtwood Smith, Allelon Ruggiero, James Waterston, Alexandra Powers, Norman Lloyd
- Runtime: 128 minutes
- Budget: $16.4 million
- Box office: $235.9 million
- Oscars: 1 win, 3 nominations
- Rotten Tomatoes: 85%
- IMDb: 8.1
- Where to watch: Streaming on Hulu
Bottom line
Dead Poets Society is one of those coming-of-age classics that launched a wave of young talent and gave Williams room to prove just how elastic his talent was. The story and cast lock into place emotionally, and a lot of that comes down to Williams refusing to play it safe—and everyone else being smart enough to let him run.