Jessica Chastain has revealed that she feels regretful over missing out on the chance to thank Robin Williams for her career success.
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The Oscar-winning actor opened up about her upbringing and entry into the arts thanks to help of a scholarship, paid for by the late actor.
Speaking on The View, Chastain reflected on being raised by a single mother through financial difficulties, before going on to become the first in her family to get a college diploma with Bachelor of Fine Arts in acting from Manhattan’s Juilliard School.
“I received the Robin Williams Scholarship,” she shared. “It was a beautiful thing, because every two years it would be given to a student and it paid for all of my schooling, it paid for my housing, it paid for me to be able to go home for Christmas and see my family”.
She added that the “generous” grant also covered books and food. While the actor wrote a note to Williams every year to say thank you, she never got to meet him in person.
“And then one time I was in LA… and Robin walks into the restaurant and sits down and starts eating. My tablemate was like, ‘You have to go say hi, you have to go talk to him.’”
While she told the friend that she would go over after he’d finished eating, she recalled being “so shy” and “didn’t want to interrupt him”.
“He ate [for] a couple minutes, and then he jumped up and ran out of the restaurant, so he must’ve been late for something”.
The Molly’s Game actor recalled going after him, before stopping herself because she didn’t want to come off as a “crazy person, attacking him or something”.
“And I always regret it,” she confessed, “because I never had the opportunity to say thank you in person”.
Chastain added that she now insists fans come over and say hello to her in public, “because it’s so important to me, I wish I could have thanked him”.
Williams died by suicide aged 63 in 2014. This year his son Zak remembered his father on the ninth anniversary of his death, writing on Instagram: “These days are always hard and I love remembering you for being so very, very YOU.”