Robin Williams Made an 'Enormous Difference' by Always Hiring Homeless People on His Projects, Says Daughter Zelda

Mar. 15, 2025

Robin Williams arrives at the premiere of “Monty Python’s Spamalot” at The Grail Theater at the Wynn Las Vegas March 31, 2007 in Las Vegas, Nevada.Photo:Ethan Miller/Getty

Ethan Miller/Getty

Zelda Williamsis highlighting the ways her late fatherRobin Williamshelped others at every turn.

At the recent Comic Relief Live event in New York City, the daughter of the late comic opened up about how he always hired unhoused people to work on his sets.

“My dad, on all of his projects and especially when he was on tour, would hire homeless people,” she told the crowd. “He would actively give them jobs.”

TheLisa Frankensteindirector, 35, said she hopes others in the entertainment industry would follow in her dad’s generous lead.

“Please, if you ever have an opening, at least consider it,” she said. “It makes an enormous difference for people generationally. It doesn’t just take incredible organizations like [Comic Relief]. It takes individuals. So if you ever don’t think that you as a single person or as a person who has a business can make a difference, please know you can, even if you’re hiring just one person.”

Honorees Zelda Williams, Billy Crystal, and Whoopi Goldberg attend Comic Relief Live on December 9, 2024 at Jazz at Lincoln Center NYC.Noam Galai/Getty

Noam Galai/Getty

Robin’s kindness towards the homeless has been well documented.

During a Senate hearing about the Homelessness Prevention and Revitalization Act of 1990, Williams, who died in 2014 at age 63, spoke and said, “This program has incredible possibilities to deal with keeping people in their homes. The problem cannot be denied anymore … You can’t keep picking people up, you have to stop them from falling. That’s what I hope.”

During his speech, Crystal, 76, talked about how much it meant to all three of them to be able to help raise money to fight homelessness.

Robin Williams and Zelda Williams in 2006.SGranitz/WireImage

SGranitz/WireImage

“Robin and I were good friends, only to become great friends and, later, brothers,” Crystal said. “We were thrown together with this incredible idea that funny people could help with aiding the homeless, which is one of America’s tragedies that we don’t like to talk about.”

“That’s was what we knew we were doing. Something that was not only funny but helpful,” he said. “And that’s the greatest thing that you can do with your talent. When the money came in, it went out to the most needy places across the country, the shelters across the country. And the three of us [Whoopi, Robin and myself] would deliver the checks to these individual shelters all across the country.”

Billy Crystal is honored with the Inaugural “Icon Award” at Comic Relief Live on December 9, 2024 at Jazz at Lincoln Center NYC.Craig Barritt/Getty

Craig Barritt/Getty

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He added that he gets emotional just thinking about it. “I have to say, that was always our greatest joy.”

To date, the nonprofit Comic Relief US has raised over $436 million, impacting more than 35 million children and young people around the world.

source: people.com