Fun Facts About Mrs. Doubtfire
Director Chris Columbus revealed that he shot 2 million feet of film for Mrs. Doubtfire — all because of Robin Williams. The beloved comedian would improvise during scenes so much that they needed four cameras going at all times so they didn’t miss anything! It's not surprising, then, that there are some fascinating behind-the-scenes tales from Mrs. Doubtfire that will make you fall in love with the movie all over again now that it’s turning 30.
It was filmed in a real house — and you can visit it
At one point in the movie, we hear Miranda give the address of her family home. This is the real address of the real house used in the movie: 2640 Steiner St. After Williams’ death in 2014, the home became an impromptu memorial.
Fans gathered outside the iconic house to place flowers and tributes there. They've continued to do so ever since, and luckily the owners have been welcoming to anybody who wishes to view the house — from the outside, at least.
They told the kids a little white lie
While auditioning for the parts of Daniel’s older children, Lisa Jakub and Matthew Lawrence were introduced to “the director’s mother.” But, you may have guessed already, the person they were introduced to wasn't the director’s mother at all.
It was really Williams in full Mrs. Doubtfire makeup. He and the producers wanted to see how the children would react. Both kids eventually worked it out and were happy to be fooled.
There’s another Williams in the movie
Mrs. Doubtfire is a film about familial relationships, so it seems only appropriate that another member of Williams’ family would be in there. You might think it would have been his then-four-year-old daughter, Zelda — but you'd be wrong.
The bartender at the pool is mysteriously credited as “Dr. Toad.” Mrs. Doubtfire is the actor’s only credit on IMDb, but that’s probably because he’s actually Williams’ older brother Robert. He was known throughout his life by his middle name, Todd.
Blake Lively auditioned for a part
Actress Blake Lively was five years old when she auditioned for the role in Mrs. Doubtfire that eventually went to Mara Wilson. She apparently got down to the final two as well. But the problem came when she met Robin Williams. Apparently the young Lively was such a huge fan of the actor that she was incredibly nervous to do the audition.
Rumor has it her dad tried to ease her nerves by telling her she’d be auditioning with Williams’ twin brother, but the plan failed, and Lively blew the audition. Maybe it was for the best though: it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Mara Wilson in this iconic role, and Lively ultimately got her big break anyway in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
Williams was in the makeup chair forever
In the movie, it takes Daniel seemingly no time at all to change in and out of his Mrs. Doubtfire persona. He slips on a wig, pops on a bit of make-up, and he's done. Not so in real life!
On the movie set, Williams had to spend a whopping — and probably quite exhausting — 4 and a half hours every day having the Mrs. Doubtfire prosthetics applied. Makeup artist Ve Neill was in charge of the labor-intensive process.
Williams shocked members of the public
Williams was up for wacky antics no matter what film he was doing or in whose attire he was dressed. The actor revealed in a 2013 Reddit AMA that, while filming Mrs. Doubtfire, he took himself off to an adult shop in full make-up and tried to buy some... special items.
"The guy was about to sell it to me until he realized it was me — Robin Williams — not an older Scottish woman," Williams wrote. "He just laughed and said, 'What are you doing here?' and I left. Did I make the purchase? No. Did I walk away with a really good story? Yes."
Lisa Jakub was expelled because of the film
Because Lisa Jakub spent so much time away from school to film Mrs. Doubtfire, her school uncharitably expelled her. She was, of course, devastated. Williams stepped in and wrote a letter to the school on her behalf. According to Jakub, the school framed the letter... but still didn’t let her back in!
“Robin stood up for me. He was in my corner,” she wrote in a blog. “I was only 14, but I had already seen that I was in an industry that was full of back-stabbing. And it was entirely clear that Robin had my back.”
Robin Williams couldn't make Sally Field laugh
Sally Field has nothing but fond memories of working with Robin Williams. "What drove him absolutely crazy is that he could never make me laugh; he would never break me up," she once said.
Field only broke into laughter once during a scene — when Pierce Brosnan made a fart noise with his arm. “Robin said, ‘Well, who knew that it was only potty humor that you were gonna laugh at?’” Field joked.
Mrs. Doubtfire was based on a real woman
In the original production notes for the film, director Chris Columbus explained, “We all wanted Mrs. Doubtfire to be someone who would be the perfect grandmother. We looked through hundreds and hundreds of photographs until we found a portrait of an older English woman.”
He continued, “She had an incredibly sweet face, pretty, prim, very popular, and extremely warm. It became the key to Mrs. Doubtfire’s look. But what makes Mrs. Doubtfire such a colorful character is that inside of her is Robin's energy.”
Williams learned a lot about being a woman
“High heels are the most sinister invention of the last two centuries!” Williams joked in the production notes of Mrs. Doubtfire. “I mean, what they do to your spine alone, even if they do make your legs look great!”
But he was pleased that he “got to be this sweet, warm, lovable woman with a very nurturing side in a world that sometimes doesn’t tolerate old age very well.” He also revealed his youngest son didn’t recognize him until he spoke in his real voice.
A lot of work went into that make-up
There were four people responsible for Mrs. Doubtfire's final look. Greg Cannom started the process when he designed the make-up. Then Ve Neill applied the latex to Williams’ face and painted it to create a more human look.
Hairstylist Yolanda Toussieng took care of the iconic wig and then the team squeezed Williams into a body suit to craft that special silhouette. The final part of the process fell to Marit Allen in wardrobe, where Williams got his perfect old-lady clothes.
The author of the book was not happy with the movie
Anne Fine wrote the book Alias Madame Doubtfire, which Mrs. Doubtfire is based on. The novel is reportedly a lot less family-friendly than the finished film — and that’s why Fine is not a fan of the movie.
She told The Independent in 2022, “I was quite astonished that so many people loved the film, and so many children loved it.” But she did concede she was “impressed with Robin Williams’ comedy skills.”
The movie spawned a lifelong friendship
Delightfully, the three child actors who played Daniel’s kids are still friends. Mara Wilson told Variety in 2018, “I remember the second that I got into a room with Matt and Lisa, I knew that I adored them…”
She revealed, “I remember secretly wishing and hoping I could get the part, but they would get it too because we did really feel like family. Lisa and I talk all the time now and we saw Matt last week.”
Williams tried to get Brosnan to laugh during his choking scene
Pierce Brosnan told Conan O’Brien how Williams tried to crack him up during his big choking scene. “They sent the kids away, and he just let it rip,” Brosnan said. Williams apparently would say the most “foul-mouthed and funny” things about Field's character.
“As a supporting actor, you give the man some space, and I kept to my text and he just danced around it,” Brosnan added. “How could I compete with him?” He added that losing Williams was “a mighty blow.”
Happy endings
Screenwriter Randi Singer believed both the book and the film could help children get through divorce. She told Variety in 2018, “Just because parents fail as a married couple doesn’t make it acceptable to fail as co-parents.”
She added, “I’m so proud that in 1993, we had a message that says there are all kinds of families and that includes families where the parents are no longer married.”
Williams liked the idea of making a movie about divorce
Williams explained in the production notes that he thought Mrs. Doubtfire “was an interesting way of looking at how children are dealt with in divorces.” He said, “A lot of times children are little hostages being passed back and forth and this film uses comedy and the character to look at that.”
His then-wife and producing partner, Marsha Garces Williams, added, “I liked the grain of the idea when I read the book several years ago. For a father to be so desperate to see his children that he'd go to such great lengths appealed to me.”
Williams said the character was like being possessed
Among the many reasons that Williams wanted to take on the role of Mrs. Doubtfire was the challenge of getting it right. “It's wonderful to get to play a person inside of a person,” he said in the production notes.
“It's almost like possession, like the old Mardi Gras masks — you know there's someone inside there,” he said. “It's two different worlds at once. There's fun in that, but sadness, too. Daniel hears things that he couldn't hear as himself.”
It was a challenge to find good child actors
The crew had a hard time casting the roles of the three Hillard children, but the movie had an ace up its sleeve. Director Chris Columbus had experience working with kids — after directing the Home Alone movies.
“I was looking for real kids to convey a sense of pain and trouble and confusion about divorce,” he said in the production notes. “These kids are all very naturalistic in their approach to acting and their performances are believable.”
Sally Field was the number-one pick for the film
Director Chris Columbus could only think of one person to play Miranda in this film. “When I was working on the script, I found that I was thinking of [Sally Field],” he said in the production notes. “Casting Sally was my objective from day one.”
He added, “She’s the kind of actress who adds depth and density to a character without pushing it too far in one direction. It’s important to me that Miranda and Daniel are completely real people. Sally helps get that point across.”
Sally Field said it was like working with two Robin Williamses
Field has only ever had nice things to say about working with Robin Williams. Yet she had the privilege of working with two of his characters. “It was like having two co-stars,” she said in the production notes.
“You sort of forget that Mrs. Doubtfire is Robin and you think it's this other person,” she added. “And when he's Daniel, it's just so much fun. You really just have to stay alive and watch him take flight and try to go where he goes. You never get bored!”
They made a full Pudgy Parakeet and Grunge the Cat cartoon
In the finished film, there’s less than a minute dedicated to the Pudgy Parakeet and Grunge the Cat cartoon that Daniel provides voices for. But the team behind this spirited animation actually created a real five-minute show.
The director of the cartoon was none other than animation legend Chuck Jones. Fans of the movie got their first chance to watch the entire animated sequence after Mrs. Doubtfire was released on DVD.
Mrs. Doubtfire could have been NC-17
Columbus captured so much footage of Williams improvising that he ended up with four different versions of the movie. He told Yahoo! he had “literally, a PG-rated version of the film, PG-13, R, and NC-17.” They ended up with a PG-13.
Columbus had to shoot with four cameras. “The other actors had no idea what [Williams] was going to say,” said Columbus. “And it was getting their expressions and reactions the first time they ever heard him say something like that.”
There could have been a happier ending
It’s perhaps surprising in the happily-ever-after world of Hollywood that Mrs. Doubtfire ends with Daniel and Miranda remaining divorced. But it’s not surprising that at one point the studio asked the writers to craft that happy ending.
This led to original writer Randi Singer leaving the project and co-writer Leslie Dixon rewriting the screenplay. After the studio and Columbus read the new ending, however, Singer was brought back on board and the original ending was restored.
There was talk of a sequel
After Williams died by suicide in 2014, Entertainment Weekly revealed that the studio and Columbus were in the early stages of developing Mrs. Doubtfire 2. The magazine said Elf writer David Berenbaum had already written a first draft and had started work on a second.
“The last time I met with Robin before he passed away was about the Mrs. Doubtfire sequel,” Columbus said. “We had a script and it was a great script. Robin was prepared to do it. And then, unfortunately, he passed away.”
There is a Mrs. Doubtfire musical
We may not be getting a sequel to Mrs. Doubtfire, but if fans want another chance to revisit the story, they could check out the musical. The Mrs. Doubtfire musical premiered in 2019 with a book written by Karey Kirkpatrick and John O'Farrell.
The musical transferred to the West End in London in 2023, while a touring version of the show is currently playing throughout the U.S. into 2024. It did play on Broadway for a while, but the pandemic interrupted its run.
Matthew Lawrence got the job after Williams pinched him
“Robin basically got me the role,” Matthew Lawrence (Chris) told Variety in 2018. “He leaned over me and said, ‘I really like you. I want you to play my son, so you got to work with me on this one. I’m going to do something, just go with it.'”
“He turned his back to the camera and just pinched me so hard, right in that sensitive spot between your arm and your chest," Lawrence said. “My reaction was a normal reaction: ‘Hey, you can’t do that. You just hurt me. What are you doing?’’ Everyone in the room started laughing. “That was the moment that got me the role.”
A major plot hole
Fans of the movie have wondered now and again: how is Mrs. Doubtfire being paid for the work she does? She isn’t a real person, so she can’t have a bank account!
Daniel couldn't use his own bank account, either, because that would give the game away. It’s possible Daniel used his brother’s account details or got paid cash in hand... but that’s never explicitly stated in the film.
Miranda knows nothing about pianos
Sally Field’s character Miranda is an interior designer. She’s apparently not a very good one, though. At one point in the film, she recommends a “17th-century grand piano” for a client, but there’s just one tiny problem there…
Pianos didn’t actually exist in the 17th century. Bartolomeo Cristofori is credited with inventing the modern piano in the year 1700. Before then, musicians had to be satisfied with the harpsichord.
The cooking scene doesn't make sense
Blink and you’ll miss this one, but it’s there! When Daniel-as-Doubtfire is cooking in the kitchen, he knocks the top of the pepper pot into the food. But in the next shot, it’s gone.
There wasn’t time for it to sink to the bottom of the pan, and Mrs. Doubtfire hadn't removed it, either. We'll put this one down to Robin Williams' manic improvising making perfect continuity almost impossible.
Keep your eyes on the spider
The next time you watch the scene where Daniel is playing with the toy dinosaurs in the studio, take a look behind him. You'll notice there’s a picture of a spider on the wall, and it keeps moving around from shot to shot.
It seems like quite a big error on the part of the continuity supervisors... But now we know that Williams was such a big improviser, we can't be too mad at them. They probably had hours of footage of the same scene to play with!
Mrs. Doubtfire has robe problems
In one funny scene, Daniel is in the kitchen before Mrs. Stelner comes in. Notice that his robe is undone at the top. But a few shots and one splattering on the face later, the robe is done up, and we never see him closing it.
A little while later, it’s open again! A very tiny mistake, of course, but once you’ve seen it you can’t un-see it. It's the kind of thing you only spot after watching the movie a dozen times like us!
Continuity errors abound
When unloading the shopping with Miranda in one scene, Mrs. Doubtfire takes out a bag of tomatoes, and then a few moments later the same bag comes out again. Well… Mrs. Doubtfire did say she would only feed the children good, nutritious food!
And the next time you watch the birthday party in the movie, keep a close eye on Williams’ hair. He’s wearing a cap, and when he takes it off his hair is uncombed. But in the next shot of him, it’s neatly styled.
Mrs. Doubtfire's TV show doesn't make sense
On Mrs. Doubtfire’s TV show, she and her puppet are heard talking about how England is an island. It's a small moment, and one you can easily miss. But let us reassure you that England is definitely not an island!
It would make more sense to say Britain is an island... though that’s not completely correct either. The British Isles actually consist of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, and are spread across more than one island.