Hal Marcovitz - Robin Williams

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As Hollywood's dazzling stars and starlets filed into the prestigious Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on Oscar night in 1998, there was little doubt in their minds about what was going to happen in the next few hours. Titanic, the blockbuster film of the year, was almost sure to garner a record number of awards. The disaster epic, which had cost $200 million to make and had earned more than double that amount, was nominated in most of the major categories. After all, a major studio campaign had been under way for weeks to make certain the film would sweep the Academy Awards.

Yet although Titanic was the heavy favorite to take home a great number of Oscar statuettes, the makers of another film were also hoping for recognition by the Academy. Good Will Hunting was the story of a rebellious and underachieving mathematical genius and the psychotherapist who coaxed him out of his shell. This therapist was played by Robin Williams, the veteran actor and comedy star who had come very close to winning Oscars in his career three times before. Each time before, though, Robin had just missed.

Millions of television sets were tuned to the Oscars that night in 1998. Within the Shrine Auditorium, a silence fell over the crowd as actress Mira Sorvino spoke while presenting Best Supporting Actor:

"The nominees are

"Greg Kinnear for As Good As It Gets.

"Burt Reynolds for Boogie Nights.

"Anthony Hopkins for Amistad.

"Robert Forster for Jackie Brown.

"And Robin Williams for Good Will Hunting."

The race for Best Supporting Actor was one of the dramas that had dominated Oscar talk all spring. Since no actor from Titanic had been nominated in that category, Oscar handicappers had declared the race wide open.

Still, Burt Reynolds seemed to have an edge on the other actors. Reynolds, who played adult film director Jack Horner in Boogie Nights, was a veteran actor with a long list of movie and TV credits. Reynolds had seen his popularity wane in recent years due to a series of box-office flops, but Boogie Nights was regarded as his comeback role. Reynolds was definitely the sentimental favorite, and in the weeks leading up to Oscar night he took a step ahead of the competition when he captured the Golden Globe Award for his role. (Golden Globes are awarded by the Hollywood Press Association, an organization of critics who work for magazines, newspapers, and other media outlets.)

Few people, however, would have argued with the outcome if one of the other nominees in the Supporting Actor field captured the Oscar. Hopkins had already won the 1992 Best Actor award for his chilling portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in the psychological thriller Silence of the Lambs. (Ironically, he had beaten Robin out of the Oscar that year, when Robin was also nominated as Best Actor for his role in The Fisher King.) Greg Kinnear was a popular TV star who had made the transition to feature film work by scoring an Oscar nomination in one of his first roles. And Robert Forster was regarded as one of the true anchors of Jackie Brown, a violent crime drama directed by Quentin Tarantino.

Faced with that competition, Robin regarded himself as a long shot. "The Oscar nominations are a great stroke," he told an interviewer for Hollywood Online shortly before the awards ceremony. "I'm not going to lie. It's a great honor, to go into a room and see Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman sitting there, all these amazing actors. It would be great to win, but I'm not betting on myself."

The nominees sat patiently through the program while they listened to the host for the telecast, Billy Crystal, an actor and comedian who was Robin's close friend. They heard Stanley Donen, who directed and choreographed many of the blockbuster Hollywood musicals of the 1940s and 1950s, receive an honorary Oscar for his lifetime of work. They listened as Fay Wray, who starred in the 1933 classic King Kong, was also singled out for recognition.

Titanic did not disappoint its fans. The film won 11 Oscar trophies that night, tying the record held by the 1959 epic Ben Hur. James Cameron, the director of Titanic, accepted the Oscar for best director by shouting the most popular line from his movie: "I'm the king of the world!"

Then, as the evening wore on, Good Will Hunting captured the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. The movie's writers were Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, the two young actors who also starred in the film. Without a doubt, Good Will Hunting owed much of its success to their creative genius, but the movie also owed no small debt to Robin Williams.

Damon and Affleck wrote the character of Sean Maguire, the therapist, with Williams in mind, but they had no guarantee that Robin would be drafted for the role. In fact, the film was in trouble until Robin stepped in and agreed to play Maguire. Affleck and Damon had first found a buyer for their script in Castle Rock Pictures. The studio balked, though, at giving the two young actors top roles in the film. (Damon intended to play Will Hunting, the mathematical genius, while Affleck expected to be cast as Will's friend Chuckie.) Instead, Castle Rock insisted that two better-known actors be found for the starring roles. Affleck and Damon next took their script to Miramax Films, which agreed to let Damon and Affleck remain in the key rolesas long as Robin Williams played Maguire. Luckily for Affleck and Damon, Robin accepted.

"I was amazed to meet Matt and Ben, both of whom are in their early 20s, and discover they had written this really complex piece," Robin told reporters shortly after the film was released. "The movie is about a damaged genius who is changed by his encounters with my charactera therapist who is damaged in another way.

Robin is pictured as teacher and therapist Sean Maguire in a scene from Good Will Hunting. While Williams made his mark as a comedian, he took his dramatic work very seriously.

Source: Photofest.

"It's a tough piece. The therapist is a guy who grew up in South Boston and he's got an edge to him. The guy takes the punches and comes back because he's determined to make a connection. I had a blast making this movie."

The gamble certainly paid off for Miramax. Made on a small budget, Good Will Hunting earned an astonishing $133 million at the box office.

When at last it was time to give out the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, Robin certainly knew the routine; he had already been through the tension of Oscar night three times before. Each of those evenings, he had to remain in the audience while other actors went to the podium to accept their honors. His face would appear in a split-screen on TV as the camera captured the reactions of the winner as well as the other four nominated actors who would have to take their disappointment with good sportsmanship.

But on this early spring night in 1998, Robin Williams finally found himself at the pinnacle of his career.