Exclusive: Robin Williams was Christopher Reeve’s First Hospital Visitor after His Accident | Celebrity News

• In PEOPLE's newest cowl story, Christopher Reeve's kids open up about their father's extraordinary life, together with his friendship with Robin Williams
• The new documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story explores how a lot Robin Williams' humor saved Christopher Reeve after he was paralyzed from the neck down in 1995
• Will Reeve says Robin Williams was the primary good friend to point out up on the hospital after his accident, making him snigger by pretending to be a Russian proctologist

Will Reeve is opening up about his father Christopher Reeve's distinctive friendship with the late Robin Williams.

“Robin was dad's best friend, and you show up for your friends,” Will, 32, tells PEOPLE of the longtime buddies, who first met within the early '70s once they had been theater college students at Juilliard collectively. He says they grew so shut they referred to as one another “brother.”

“Our dad and Robin had a singular bond,” Will says. “They had a friendship that someone should make a movie about, but what shone through in that was just their love and respect for each other, and that never wavered.”

Will notes that Williams was the primary good friend to point out up on the hospital in Virginia after his fall from a horse that left him paralyzed from the neck down. Not solely did Williams present up, however he managed to make a bereft Christopher snigger by pretending to be a Russian proctologist.

“No one was better at showing up with love and with the right dose of humor than Robin Williams and his wife Marsha, who we call our fairy godmother,” Will says, including, “We are still so incredibly close with her.”

In the brand new documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story  (produced by Words +
Pictures), which is in choose theaters on Sept. 21 and Sept. 25, their friendship is displayed by way of classic footage.

The movie additionally paints a full portrait of Christopher's life each earlier than and after his accident, together with his early days as an actor, when he first grew shut with Williams.

In his 1998 memoir Still Me, Christopher recalled a primary impression of the Mrs. Doubtfire actor, writing that once they met, Williams “wore tie-dyed shirts with tracksuit bottoms and talked a mile a minute. … He was like an untied balloon that had been inflated and instantly launched. I watched in awe as he nearly caromed off the partitions of the school rooms and hallways. To say that he was ‘on' can be a significant understatement.”

Will says after his dad's accident, it wasn't simply Williams who rallied across the household.

“We were fortunate enough to live in a tight-knit community and had big groups of friends and teachers and coaches and people from the past and people from the present just chipping in however they could always,” Will recollects.

But Williams and Marsha's presence was particularly impactful. “Robin and Marsha did so much for us, things that we'll never be able to repay them for. We owe them an eternal debt of gratitude for the way that they supported us and loved us, and still do.”

For tickets to see Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, go to Fathom Events.

To learn extra about Christopher Reeve's extraordinary life, choose up the most recent difficulty of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.