Robin Williams’ ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ improvising racked up 2M feet of film
nypost.comHellooooo!”Robin Williams improvised so much on the set of the 1993 comedy “Mrs. Doubtfire” that production ended up shooting two million feet of film by the time the movie wrapped. “Early on in the process, he went to me, ‘Hey boss, the way I like to work, if you’re up for it, is I’ll give you three or four scripted takes, and then let’s play,’” Chris Columbus, 65, told Business Insider. “By saying that, what he meant was he wanted to improvise.” “And that’s exactly how we shot every scene,” the “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” director added. “We would have exactly what was scripted, and then Robin would go off and it was something to behold.”In the film, Williams, who died by suicide in 2014 at age 63, plays Daniel Hillard, a struggling actor going through a divorce from wife Miranda (Sally Field).
After their split, the newly single mother hires as a babysitter Mrs. Euphegenia Doubtfire, who, unbeknownst to her, is actually her ex-husband.The film, which grossed more than $440 million worldwide and later spawned a Broadway musical, also stars Pierce Brosnan as Miranda’s colleague Stu.
According to Columbus, Williams’ antics would often throw the entire production team off-kilter. “The poor script supervisor,” Columbus reminisced. “Remember, this is the early 1990s, she wasn’t typing what he was saying.
She was handwriting it and Robin would change every take.“So Robin would go to a place where he couldn’t remember much of what he said.
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