Robin Williams Wrote Letter for Expelled Teen Actor

Getting kicked out of high school while chasing your dreams sounds devastating, but sometimes the people who show up for you matter more than the institutions that don't.

Lisa Jakub was 15 and filming Mrs. Doubtfire when her Canadian high school sent a letter telling her not to come back. She'd been mailing assignments back and forth since production started, a workaround that seemed fine until the school decided it wasn't working for them anymore.

Robin Williams noticed she was upset on set. So he did what apparently came naturally to him: he grabbed a pen and wrote a letter to her principal, asking them to support both her education and her career.

The principal's response? They framed the letter, hung it in the office, and never invited Jakub back.

But here's where the story gets better. Jakub didn't just survive the rejection. She got into the University of Virginia, where a teaching assistant once handed back a statistics assignment with the note: "Dear Doubtfire Girl, you got a B-."

Sunny's Take

What Jakub gained from Williams turned out to be worth more than any single school's approval. She described working with him as a crash course in presence and spontaneity, completely different from the scripted rhythms she'd learned as a child actor.

"We had always used a script, so I knew when it was my turn to speak," she shared during a Mrs. Doubtfire cast reunion on the Brotherly Love podcast. "Then you go on set with Robin, and it's like, who the heck knows what's going to happen now?"

Williams also wrote her a college recommendation letter. The school that expelled her never changed their mind, but it stopped mattering.

Sometimes the door that closes isn't the one you needed anyway.

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