12 Best Robin Williams Movies of All Time

Robin Williams in 'Mrs. Doubtfire.'

Choosing the best Robin Williams movies is no easy task—the man made so many good ones. While his most iconic performances often saw him play inspiring mentors—most notably in Dead Poets Society, for which he was nominated for an Oscar, and Good Will Hunting, for which he won one—he also had a knack for darker and more complicated characters, which was highlighted in his later work. In honor of the 30-year anniversary of Mrs. Doubtfire, here are 12 of Williams's greatest movies of all time.

12 best Robin Williams movies

1. Good Will Hunting (1997)

Williams won a well-deserved Oscar for Best Actor for his role as Sean Maguire, the court-ordered therapist tasked with getting through to Matt Damon’s troubled, traumatized young math genius. It’s arguably the defining role of Williams’s career, combining deadpan humor with a soulful tenderness that anchors many of this beloved movies' most memorable scenes.

Related: 100 Best Robin Williams Quotes to Celebrate the Late Comedian

2. Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)

Broad comedy this good is deceptively hard to pull off, and the cult status of Mrs. Doubtfire is largely down to how charming Williams is in the lead role, and how thoroughly he commits to the whole bit. He plays a down-on-his-luck divorced dad who is so desperate to see his children that he masquerades as an elderly British nanny, a farcical premise that has no right to work as well as it does onscreen.

3. The Fisher King (1991)

This off-kilter but moving gem from Terry Gilliam blends dark character drama with magical realism, focusing on the relationship between a fragile homeless man (Williams) who has succumbed to mental illness after witnessing his wife’s murder, and a cynical radio shock jock (Jeff Bridges) who indirectly caused that murder.

4. Insomnia (2002)

This crime drama is often overlooked in conversations about writer-director Christopher Nolan’s CV, and while it lacks the striking ingenuity of his other early work like Memento, it’s worth watching to see Williams play wildly against type as a serial killer. Coupled with the eerie visual setting (a small Alaskan town where the sun never fully sets), his chilling performance is all the more unnerving.

5. Dead Poets’ Society (1989)

It’s impossible to imagine this indelible 1989 coming-of-age classic with anyone other than Williams in the role of John Keating, an unconventional and passionate English teacher who arrives to shake things up at a strict New England prep school. The genuinely inspirational energy of his performance encapsulate so much of what made Williams an unparalleled screen presence—the infamous “O Captain! My Captain!” scene only works so well because his students’ devotion is so believable.

Related: Best Tom Hanks Movies of All Time

6. Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)

After many years as a stand-up comedian and a TV star on the ABC sitcom Mork & Mindy, Williams’s movie breakout role came in this 1987 war comedy, which takes place in Saigon during the Vietnam War. Williams plays a charismatic but irreverent radio DJ whose broadcasts on the Armed Forces Radio Service make him hugely popular with the troops, but land him in hot water with higher-ups. The radio broadcast scenes here are heavily improvised, showing off Williams’s unmatched talent for riffing.

7. The Birdcage (1996)

Mike Nichols and Elaine May’s wry adaptation of the musical La Cage aux Folles was a boundary-breaking gay comedy back in the late 1990s, and centers on a pair of incredibly charming performances from Williams and Nathan Lane. They play a couple running a drag club together in South Beach, Florida, who, through a series of unfortunate events, wind up being forced to entertain an ultra-conservative couple for the evening. A lightly farcical parlor drama with real heart.

8. World’s Greatest Dad (2009)

This pitch-black comedy is an underrated late highlight in Williams’s resumé. He gives a heartfelt performance as a single father who becomes tangled in an elaborate web of lies after his son accidentally kills himself via autoerotic asphyxiation. Trying to avoid scandal, Williams’s character fakes a suicide note for his son—and then has to try to maintain the lie as the story gathers more and more press attention, delivering him the fame and literary renown he’s always wanted.

9. The World According To Garp (1982)

In one of his earliest lead performances on the big screen, Williams played the title role in this tragicomedy adapted from John Irving’s bestseller of the same name. A satire of gender dynamics and toxic masculinity among other things, the movie follows Garp’s struggles to escape the shadow of his mother (Glenn Close), a radical feminist whose bestselling manifesto has turned her into a cultural icon, making Garp’s struggles as a writer all the more glaring.

10. Awakenings (1990)

In this underrated psychological drama, Williams plays a character loosely based on the pioneering neurologist Oliver Sacks, turning in a restrained and thoughtful performance. Based on Sacks’s 1973 memoir of the same name, Awakenings follows Dr. Malcolm Sayer, a dedicated doctor who makes the extraordinary discovery that L-dopa, a drug typically used to treat Parkinson's disease, can awaken patients from long-term comas and catatonic states.

11. One Hour Photo (2002)

Despite being best known and loved for his affable warmth, Williams also was capable of being incredibly unsettling on screen. This early laughs psychological thriller is a real hidden gem, starring Williams as a photo technician who becomes obsessed with one particular family whose photos he’s been developing for years. The movie feels like a real time capsule, now that social media has transformed the way stalking is depicted on screen—but the fun nostalgia factor doesn’t undermine how chilling Williams is in this role.

12. Aladdin (1992)

It’s near-impossible to imagine anybody else playing the larger-than-life Genie in Aladdin, which is saying something for a vocal performance. Directors Ron Clements and John Musker famously wrote the role with Williams in mind, and subsequently gave him a lot more free rein to improvise than is typical for Disney actors. “Robin changed the way animated films were perceived,” Clements told Variety in 2021. “His brilliant comedy brought an adult appeal to animation that was new at the time.”

Next, The 100 Best Movies of All Time