Two men sitting together on a park bench in a green park, one older wearing a newsboy cap and patterned cardigan, one younger in a brown jacket.
Good Will Hunting
TV + Movies

Robin Williams Improvised the Final Line of Good Will Hunting. It Was Never in the Script

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In the closing scene, Robin Williams’s character was only supposed to walk out, read Will’s goodbye letter, and let the camera sit on him. Matt Damon stood next to the camera and read the letter out loud on every take so Williams could hear his voice. Williams did around 15 takes, going inside, putting the envelope back in the mailbox, coming back out, some of them with no words at all.

On roughly the ninth take he read the letter, looked up, and said, “Son of a bitch. He stole my line.” Damon grabbed director Gus Van Sant. He said it was like watching a piece of dialogue fall from heaven. That improvised line is the last thing anyone says in the movie.

Matt Damon was on Amy Poehler’s podcast Good Hang when he started talking about the last day of shooting Good Will Hunting, the film he and Ben Affleck had been carrying around as a script for five years before anyone would make it.

A bearded man in a blue jacket leans against a weathered doorframe with peeling paint and old mailboxes, looking downward.
Leaning against a weathered doorframe with peeling paint and old mailboxes, a bearded man in a blue jacket looks downward in a contemplative close-up from Good Will Hunting. Credit: Made with Google AI / Good Will Hunting.

When Williams finally signed on, Damon says he took it seriously and came in deeply prepared. Generous as a person, generous as a creative partner. He was also a perfectionist who chased take after take, something Damon traces to his years in comedy, always thinking, “I’m gonna refine this joke.” They went over budget on film during the shoot, sending out to Kodak for more stock nearly every day because he was burning through so much of it, just so he could feel like they got it.

Ben Affleck wasn’t on set the day the final scene came together, and Damon says he couldn’t wait to tell him what happened. The two of them went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the movie. The last line in it is one neither of them wrote.

Two men sit on a park bench outdoors — an older bearded man in a plaid cardigan and cap, and a younger man in a brown jacket, both looking forward.
Two men sit side by side on a park bench in a sunny green setting, the older in a plaid cardigan and newsboy cap leaning gently toward the younger — a quiet scene from Good Will Hunting. Credit: Made with Google AI / Good Will Hunting.

Robin Williams died in 2014. The last thing his character says in the film is something that fell out of him in the moment, standing at a mailbox.

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About the author

Nadia Santiago

Nadia Santiago is a writer who lives between the clouds and the coastline, and writes about all the things your heart knows but your mouth can never quite say.