20 facts you might not know about 'Mrs. Doubtfire'

Some movies are obviously adaptations of novels, but you would be forgiven for having no idea Mrs. Doubtfire is based on a book. It’s an adaptation of Anne Fine’s 1987 novel Alias Madame Doubtfire. Fine is a British author, so perhaps her book had more cache in her homeland than across the pond.

Chris Columbus made his name by writing Gremlins, a movie considered family-unfriendly enough to help usher in the PG-13 rating. Then, Columbus became a big success in the world of family entertainment. Before helming Mrs. Doubtfire, he directed Home Alone and its New York-set sequel.

If Fine had her way, Mrs. Doubtfire would have had an interesting lead. Her first choice to play Daniel Hilliard, a.k.a. Mrs. Doubtfire, was none other than Warren Beatty. It’s hard to envision Beatty in a film like this, and by the 1990s, he was working on his own projects anyway, having established himself as a successful director.

Tim Allen had become a big success thanks to his standup career and his sitcom Home Improvement . He was apparently offered the chance to play Daniel and Stu, his romantic rival. Allen turned them both down. Robin Williams, who also produced, ended up playing Daniel, while a pre-James Bond Pierce Brosnan played Stu.

Blake Lively has had a successful career in film and television, but every acting career involves fruitless auditions. When she was still a child actor, Lively auditioned to play Natalie, Daniel’s youngest child. She didn’t get the part, as it went to Mara Wilson instead.

Mrs. Doubtfire was Wilson’s first film, and her only other on-screen credit of that era was five episodes of Melrose Place. Wilson would go on to have a bit of run as a significant child actor, starring in the remake of Miracle on 34th Street and Matilda. Wilson would eventually step away from acting and reemerge as a notable Twitter figure and writer. She wrote a book in 2016 called Where Am I Now?: True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame.

Williams had been doing an impression of Fierstein’s distinct voice for years, and Fierstein was impressed with it. When Fierstein heard about Mrs. Doubtfire and that Williams’ character would have a gay brother in the film, Fierstein asked Williams if he could have the part. He indeed got it.

Originally, Stu was going to be more of a villainous character. However, Columbus thought it made his dynamic with Mrs. Doubtfire worse. As such, they decided to make him nicer and more of a viable potential stepfather for his kids.

Robin Williams had spent many years living in San Francisco, so perhaps he had some sway in getting the movie set and filmed there. The house that served as the Hilliards' home became a tourist attraction and drew mourners and a makeshift memorial after Williams’ death in 2014.

The bartender in the pool scene is played by a man credited as Dr. Toad. He worked as a bartender at the time and opened a vineyard called Toad Hollow in 1993. Dr. Toad’s real name was Robert Todd Williams, and he was the half-brother of Robin Williams.

It took Williams four hours in hair and makeup to get his Mrs. Doubtfire look down. After all that time and effort, he liked to have a little fun with it. Williams would stroll around town in full Mrs. Doubtfire regalia. One time, he even went into a sex shop while in costume, which likely amused him but maybe not the producers.

In one of the most famous scenes in the movie, Daniel has to improvise a face mask out of icing to avoid being detected by Mrs. Sellner. To make matters more complicated, the icing begins to melt. This wasn’t in the script. The heat of the studio lights made it melt. However, Williams could improvise around it, so it was kept in the movie.

Williams was known for adlibbing and improvising, probably adding some time to the movie, which had to be pared down in editing. Over 30 minutes of the movie were removed between the initial cut and the final cut. Had they all been kept in, the movie would have been 157 minutes long, which for a comedy is a length of Judd Apatow proportions. Many of the deleted scenes have been included in DVD releases, much of which involved Gloria, the nosy neighbor, battling Daniel.

Williams would do a lot of improvising, of course, and apparently wanted to do scenes sometimes as many as 20 times to get them “out of his system.” Even though the movie was always intended to be PG-13, Columbus put together PG and R cuts based on Williams’ improvs.

The original script had Daniel and Miranda not getting back together. They brought in new writers to rewrite it and to create a “happy ending” where the couple did reconcile. Then, thinking it over, the producers decided they didn’t want to perpetuate the idea that divorced parents will inevitably get back together for kids seeing it. Thus, they went back to the original ending.

Williams’ name had a lot of sway in 1993, and Mrs. Doubtfire paid off big time for the studio. It made $219 million in the United States and Canada and $441.3 million worldwide. This made it the second-highest-grossing film of the year, behind only the epic success of Jurassic Park.

Apparently, Daniel Hilliard was quite talented with makeup, or so we can surmise based on what happened in the real world. Mrs. Doubtfire was nominated for Best Makeup at the Academy Awards and actually won. We should probably shout out Greg Cannom, Ve Neill, and Yolanda Toussieng, who did the makeup work for the movie.

Since the Golden Globes divvies things between Drama and Musical/Comedy, it opens the door for films like Mrs. Doubtfire to win. Indeed, the movie took home Best Picture in the Musical/Comedy category, and Williams won for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy. Williams also won a Kids’ Choice Award and an MTV Movie Award for his work.

Attempts at a sequel began in 2001, even though there was no follow-up book to base it on. Apparently, it was going to involve Daniel moving close to Lydia’s college so he could keep an eye on her. However, there were problems with the script. Those problems scrapped plans to begin filming in 2007, and Williams would say the script didn’t work every time he was asked. A sequel was announced again in 2014 with a new writer. Sadly, Williams died soon after that, and all plans were canceled.

In 2018, a musical began coming together based on the film. It premiered in Seattle in 2019 before moving to Broadway. Not long after previews began, though, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Previews would start again in October of 2021 and officially opened in December of 2021 before going on hiatus again in January. It closed in May 2022. Rob McClure earned a Tony nomination for his work in the role of Daniel Hilliard.