Robin Williams Almost Starred In A Terrifying Stephen King Movie
The late, great Robin Williams is best-remembered for his warm-hearted comedic chops. He made generations laugh in films like "Mrs. Doubtfire," "Jumanji," "The Birdcage," "Hook," and many more. He was also a respected dramatic actor, having won acclaim in everything from "Dead Poets Society" to "Good Will Hunting" and beyond.
Toward the beginning of his career, however, Williams' life nearly took a very different turn. It would be a long time before he took on those dramatic roles, but according to Vulture, Williams was considered for the lead role in one of the most terrifying films ever made: "The Shining." Stanley Kubrick is said to have thought about casting Williams as Jack Torrance, a role that eventually went to Jack Nicholson. Jack Torrance is a father coming apart at the seams; over the course of the film, which was based on the novel by Stephen King, Jack succumbs to rage, alcoholism, severe boredom, and potential demonic influence while looking after a creepy snowbound hotel.
It's hard to imagine Williams in the part because it's been colored by decades of appreciation for Nicholson's work in the film. Stephen King really disliked "The Shining," after all," and when he made his own miniseries version with Mick Garris in the 1990s, Steven Weber played Jack. It's hard to watch that miniseries and not compare him to Nicholson; surely, the guy who went on to voice the Genie in "Aladdin" would've been even more jarring.
Other sources claim this is just a rumor and never would have happened
The idea that Robin Williams almost played Jack Torrance in "The Shining" is a popular tidbit of film lore — one you're likely to find all around the internet in articles that imagine what-if versions of beloved movies based on alternate casting ideas. It's even mentioned in the 2015 book "The Amazing Book of Movie Trivia," which suggests that Stanley Kubrick nixed Williams because he ironically found the funnyman "too psychotic" for the part. There is, however, some doubt as to whether any of this is actually true.
Williams was just getting famous in 1980; at the time, he was best-known for starring on "Mork & Mindy," a "Happy Days" spin-off sitcom where he played an alien trying to understand human life. As Stanley Kubrick biographer Lee Unkrich explained to Snopes, the timeline suggests Kubrick likely hadn't even heard of Williams at the time, let alone considered him for Jack Torrance before landing on Jack Nicholson.
"Stanley first read the galleys of Stephen King's novel in 1977. Nicholson was cast that year as well," Unkrich explained, having scoured the Warner Bros. Archives while researching a book called "Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining.'" He added, "Production on the film began in April of 1978." That's an important detail because the sitcom that made Williams famous didn't even premiere until that fall. Unless there's some twisted, Stephen King-ian time-travel happening here, this may just be an Internet-driven myth.
Robin Williams later proved he could be deliciously creepy
Though Robin Williams didn't star in "The Shining" – and might not have even been considered, depending on who you ask — he did eventually get a chance to prove that he could be scary. In Mark Romanek's 2002 film "One Hour Photo," Williams played Sy Parrish, a photo-development technician at a big-box store who becomes fixated on and eventually stalks one of the families who drops film at his counter.
He's deliciously creepy in the part, but he also makes the character uncomfortably sympathetic in fascinating ways. Yes, you want to cringe yourself out of existence when he begins to follow his customers home, but he also just seems desperately sad and lonely; Williams navigates that tension with an incredible amount of nuance. On the DVD commentary for the film (via YouTube) — which was one of the only ones he ever recorded — Williams acknowledged what a departure this role was from his normal on-screen persona. "I could look at this character because it is so different, and so, kind of, a definite step away from myself," he said.
We've explained the ending of "One Hour Photo" here, but Williams always refused to interpret it for people. "I can't tell you," he said, "and I don't want to."