Robin Williams had a knack for turning even a simple gesture into a kindly wrapped hidden message! Diane Lane still adores an obscure gift from her late co-star Jack (1996), almost thirty years after the film had been completed. It was a Shakespeare book which Williams had personally signed. Having earned his comedic reputation, the Oscar-winning actor gave gifts that have an ongoing effect.
Lane, who had once compared Justice League to The Avengers, took this opportunity to talk candidly about this keepsake at the 2025 Newport Beach Film Festival Honors, where she took home the ICON Award. Since that moment, the news has sent fans into a tizzy. What on earth did Robin Williams write in that book? When Lane and Williams starred together in Francis Ford Coppola’s bittersweet dramedy Jack, she played his mother. Her character was a woman who had to watch her 10-year-old son age at lightning speed.
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Off-screen, as Lane told Entertainment Tonight, Williams handed her a book filled with Shakespeare’s works. “I thought the gift was very appropriate,” she reflected. Why, you ask?
“Because he could play all the parts in all the plays.”
And really, who could argue? Williams had the depth of Hamlet, the wit of Falstaff, and the tenderness of Romeo!
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Lane said the book has stayed in her library for nearly 30 years. In an age when gifts are often instant and impersonal, Robin Williams’ choice feels VERY intimate. Lane described him as “a breath of more than fresh air.” That’s saying something coming from an actress who has worked with Hollywood’s finest. “He set the bar so high in terms of good energy,” she said.
Tributes from all over the industry trickled in after his passing away in 2014 at the age of 63. Steve Martin spoke of him as a “genuine soul,” and Nathan Lane told of his “huge heart.” Even so, stories like Diane Lane’s are proof that Robin Williams’ influence extends beyond his movies and awards. It is stored in a signed book or a Shakespearean verse.
So, what do you think the message was that Williams wrote to Diane in that book?
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