Meeting Robin Williams

It's so strange living in today's world, and so sad. That Robin Williams, a person who is so loved and admired should suffer such private hell that he felt he had to kill himself to stop the pain.

I met him,  twelve years ago at the Mill Valley Film Festival. We were filmmakers - Gord and I, and our film Singing the Bones featured at the festival, gave us a place at the table. It was the dinner-time aftermath of a tribute to Jonathan Winters, an inspiration of Robin's -- and Robin was there to pay him homage.

Whenever we're in public spaces, like restaurants, Gord always tells me to go up and order the half refill of coffee, or protest the loud music - or the lukewarm soup. He knows I 'm not afraid of talking to people to get what I want. After all, I am a Yank by birth.  I learned this 'not afraid of talking to complete strangers' from my Dad, but that's another story. So it wasn't unusual that Gord said, "You go talk to Robin."  Gord's brother, Mark Halloran knew Robin and Williams had helped Mark to acquire a green card so he could perform stand-up at The Comedy Club in Los Angeles. Gord wanted a word with Robin. To thank him for his brother. I was sent in to warm him up.

I'm an actress and have lots of courage when I'm in character, so I picked my most vivacious accented persona, my French-Canadian Nicole. I launched into her accent right away and addressed Robin directly. Luckily I speak French, because Robin immediately launched into French to answer me.

Je lui ai repondu en francais -- and then someone snapped our pic. Robin seemed uneasy to be speaking to me, but it must have been a familiar scenario -- he's famous after all. Fans have got to be introducing themselves to him all the time. I introduced Gord to Robin Williams and stepped away from the table. Robin's wife, whose hand was on his arm, stopped glaring. The whole thing took less than five minutes.

Now I have pictures of three people on my refrigerator who are dead. This is one of them.