TRIBUTE: Filmmaker Vincent Ward (right) with Robin Williams on set.
TRIBUTE: Filmmaker Vincent Ward (right) with Robin Williams on set.
Wairarapa filmmaker Vincent Ward has paid tribute to actor Robin Williams who died yesterday.
Ward became friends with Williams during the shooting of his 1998 film What Dreams May Come, which received an Academy Award for best visual effects.
"Even if for a moment you forget this man's extraordinary talentand wicked humour, if you have worked with him you know one thing: what a wonderful, extraordinary and kind man he was," Ward, a University of Canterbury adjunct professor, said from Australia yesterday.
"Well-known actors have a choice. They can be kind to all of us who really don't count, or generous to a man. Robin joked with the extras on the endless long winter nights of their waiting around during the filming of What Dreams May Come, and would keep all of us jollied along, not for his own sake but for all of us.
"We joked about him - the stealth bomber that circled the set and quietly and sensitively listened even when you weren't aware of it.
"This was a far cry from the public image of a man renowned for frantic verbal riff whom we have become more accustomed to hearing about.
"A gentle man, with a wild wit that comes from a place of both loneliness and affinity with other humans and their and his apparent absurdity, he was most of all a friend and I will miss him dearly," Ward said.
