The actor portraying Todd Anderson, a teenage student taught by Robin's character in the 1989 movie, also admits that he thought the late star 'hated' him back then.

• Aug 30, 2021

AceShowbiz - Ethan Hawke revealed that he initially didn't get along with Robin Williams pretty well on the set of "Dead Poets Society". Admitting that he thought the late comedian was "irritating" back then, the Todd Anderson depicter explained the reason behind it.

The 50-year-old made the honest confession when speaking to Variety. "I thought Robin hated me. He had a habit of making a ton of jokes on set. At 18, I found that incredibly irritating. He wouldn't stop and I wouldn't laugh at anything he did," he first explained.

However, Ethan divulged that it was Robin who helped him get his first agent. "He called, saying, 'Robin Williams says you are going to do really well.' 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," he recalled.

"I thought it was a joke. As I get older, I realize there is something intimidating about young people's earnestness, their intensity," the ex-husband of Uma Thurman added. "It is intimidating - to be the person they think you are. Robin was that for me."

This was not the first time Ethan opened up about his experience working with Robin, who died by suicide in 2014. When appearing in a June episode of "The Graham Norton Show", he detailed, "Robin was incredibly funny, relaxed and inventive and improvised constantly. The more the crew laughed the more he performed."

"But I really wanted to be a serious actor and had read Stanislavski (acting technique). I wanted to be in character so didn't laugh at him," Ethan went on. "The funnier he was, the more steam came out of my ears."

"I want to be Montgomery Clift over here, you're trying to be Zero Mostel or something. So I thought he hated me because he would constantly lay into me," he further elaborated. "No sooner would action start and he would lay into 'Todd' over here. That was my character's name."

In "Dead Poets Society", Ethan played a teenager named Todd who was taught by Robin's inspirational English teacher, John Keating. Aside from the two, actors like Robert Sean Leonard and Josh Charles starred in the 1989 movie.