Always in his heart. Matt Damon recalled working with his late Good Will Hunting costar Robin Williams in honor of the film’s 20th anniversary while chatting with Ryan Seacrest on the 2017 Golden Globes red carpet. See what he had to say in the video above!
The 46-year-old actor — who produced the film Manchester by the Sea, nominated this year for Best Motion Picture, Drama — told Seacrest, 42, that he is forever grateful to have worked with Williams on the 1997 movie, which earned Damon and pal Ben Affleck the Golden Globe for Best Screenplay in 1998.
“Oh, man, [I have] a lot of Robin Williams memories, good memories of him. And Ben said recently, it’s weird, we always felt like we were going to, we had this incredible debt to pay him back,” Damon said. “And we thought there would be time to do that and just the abruptness of somebody leaving like that, that realization comes that you’re never going to be able to pay back this incredible thing done for you.”
He continued, “That movie got made because Robin said he wanted to do it. That changed the trajectory of our careers completely, forever.”
As previously reported, Williams committed suicide in August 2014 at the age of 63. In November, the comedian’s widow, Susan Schneider Williams, opened up about the Mrs. Doubtfire star’s struggle with Lewy body dementia. She believes the condition led her husband to take his own life.
“[Parkinson’s disease] is actually an accurate diagnosis; however, that was the clinical side. The pathology was that he had diffuse Lewy body disease, which is what took him,” she told CBS This Morning’s Charlie Rose. “I can tell you in his autopsy, the coroner’s report was clear that he had Lewy body throughout all of his brain and brain stem — nearly every region.”
Watch Damon speak about Williams in the video above.
