Walter McBride/Corbis via Getty Images
Glenn Close Says Robin Williams Would ‘Be Alive’ If Christopher Reeve ‘Was Still Around’
The new documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival on January 21 in Park City, Utah. Among those who contributed to the film about the life and career of Christopher Reeve was Glenn Close.
Reeve died in 2004 at age 52, nine years after he was left paralyzed from the waist down in an equestrian accident. In 2014, the Superman actor’s longtime friend Robin Williams died by suicide at age 63.
“I always felt that if Chris was still around, Robin would still be alive,” Glenn, 76, told viewers in the film.
Glenn shared the screen with Williams in 1982’s The World According to Garp. She recalled Reeve’s making visits to the film’s set to spend time with Williams.
“On Friday evenings, Chris would literally swoop in, piloting his own plane, scoop Robin up and away they would fly for the weekend,” the Oscar winner said in 2017. “On Sunday, late afternoon, Chris would swoop back in and deliver Robin back — I have to say a little worse for wear.”
Reeve and Williams attended Juilliard together in New York City in the early ‘70s. Their friendship grew over time into a brotherhood.
“I’d never seen so much energy contained in one person,” Reeve wrote in his 1998 autobiography, Still Me, of meeting Williams. “He was like an untied balloon that had been inflated and immediately released. I watched in awe as he virtually caromed off the walls of the classrooms and hallways. To say that he was ‘on’ would be a major understatement. There was never a moment when he wasn’t doing voices, imitating teachers, and making our faces ache from laughing at his antics. His name, of course, was Robin Williams.”
After his near-fatal horseback riding accident, Reeve recalled Williams’ support before he underwent surgery to reconnect his skull and his spine.
“My friendship with Robin Williams is one of the real joys of my life,” the Street Smart actor reflected. “Robin is a person who gives to people 24 hours a day. The gift of joy, the gift of laughter. Just to be in a room with Robin Williams is a privilege. He’s a gift to the world.”
At one point, Williams even pretended to be a Russian proctologist who was due to perform an exam on Reeve while he was in the hospital. Eventually, the film director realized it was his friend reprising his character from the 1995 film Nine Months.
“I knew then: if I could laugh, I could live,” Reeve told Barbara Walters before his death of the unforgettable moment.
