LionsgateIt's amazing what you can find when you go through the archives.
Mila Kunis was among the lucky ones who got to work with Robin Williams over the course of his storied, Oscar-winning career and, in previously unpublished remarks from an interview she gave during that time, she was already calling him a person who had made a lasting impression on her life with just a few words.
Talking to Esquire in 2012, when she was shooting The Angriest Man in Brooklyn with Williams, Kunis recounted a story about meeting him when he was filming a scene on the same lot as That '70s Show one day—and she never forgot what he told her.
"And so many times you meet people they don't impact you," she told Esquire, per the excerpt the mag released following Williams' sudden death on Aug. 11. "You meet them and they're gracious and they're nice, and then there are some times when you meet somebody and they say one thing and for the rest of your life you carry that one thing and they don't even know that they impacted your life. So here's Robin Williams...and we were talking and I'm being super quiet, and he just kind of turns to me and he said, 'What's your name?'
"And I said, 'I'm Mila.'"
"And he said, 'Yeah? You're on '70s?'" Kunis continued to Esquire. "And then he said, 'Remember this moment. Remember this because things like this don't happen very often. Remember this time.'"
Chills, right? Not only because Williams' "carpe diem" lesson to his English teacher character's students in Dead Poets Society is one of the all-time classic movie quotes, but because he truly seemed to live by those words in real life, attacking every role and opportunity with gusto, a whirling dervish of energy. Until, that is, he took it upon himself to put an end to it all.
"Having somebody of Robin Williams' stature tell me to just acknowledge something meant so much," Kunis continued. "He didn't mentor me. He just said, 'Step back and appreciate this. You're having an amazing time.' I was so nervous. And he said, "Relax. And don't forget to enjoy yourself because things like this don't happen to everyone.'"
Neither do anecdotes like that. While it seemed that nearly every entertainer in Hollywood had something to say about Williams, whether they had met him or not, some—like Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg who agreed that "no words" could communicate their feelings—chose to forego a public statement and remember Williams on their own.
Count Mila among those grieving more privately. She certainly had plenty to remember.