Ethan Hawke says being on set with Robin Williams "was taxing"

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Mon 8 December 2025 10:27, UK

Ethan Hawke has opened up about working with Robin Williams on Dead Poets Society and the late actor’s mental health struggles during filming.

Williams tragically died in 2014 by suicide. He had also been suffering from Lewy Body Dementia, which was undiagnosed at the time of his death.

Now, during an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, Hawke said of working with Williams on the classic movie, “I was aware of the complexity of his emotional life.”

“I’ve had a lot of depression in my family, and it was obvious to me that all that power and that charisma came at a certain cost,” Hawke also shared.

He labelled Williams as a “deeply, deeply sensitive person who was highly attuned to the energy of a room.”

However, according to Hawke, there were two sides to Williams. In one instance, he would be “making up lines, and everybody’s laughing, everybody’s praising him”.

Then, on the other hand, Hawke added, “He was hiding in the dark by himself. And I [thought], ‘Okay, it makes a lot more sense to me now.’ It was a lot. It was taxing.”

Hawke also revealed the emotions he now feels whenever he watches Dead Poets Society, sharing, “I think of the spirit of the man that I knew on those days, and how powerful it was, and how much he weathered that storm of his own psyche for us and for other people. And I admire him tremendously.”

The actor, who was only a teenager at the time of filming, previously said in a Q&A in 2021 that he assumed Williams “hated” him on set because he didn’t laugh at his incessant jokes.

Hawke reflected: “There was this scene in the film when he makes me spontaneously make up a poem in front of the class. He made this joke at the end of it, saying that he found me intimidating. I thought it was a joke. As I get older, I realise there is something intimidating about young people’s earnestness, their intensity.”

Ethan Hawke says being on set with Robin Williams “was taxing”