It was 2014, and the president of Premiere Speakers Bureau was reviewing the conditions Robin Williams imposed to appear at any event.
Among the typical clauses of an actor of his stature, there was one unlike any other: he required the production to hire a certain number of homeless people and give them real work during filming or the event.
Lord told the story publicly after Williams’s death, that same year, at the age of 63. Biographer Emily Herbert supported the account: Williams insisted that his productions bring homeless people onto the crew, a practice that—according to those who recounted it—may have helped more than 1.500 people find employment over the years.
There is no official document to certify it, but there was a real friendship: the one he maintained with Craig Castaldo, a homeless man whom he met in 1991 during the filming of The Fisher King and with whom he built a bond that lasted for years.
Documented or not, the clause tells the same story that everyone who knew him repeats: Robin Williams saw the people no one else saw.