Actress Kathy Bates reminisced Monday night about her encounters with the late Robin Williams, noting that the first time she met him, he lent her money.
Bates, who won an Emmy for her supporting work in “American Horror Story: Coven,” recalled that she was looking for a quarter for a pay phone to call her mother, and he lent her one.
Then when she lost an Oscar for best supporting actress to Dame Judi Dench in 1999, Williams was the presenter.
She said he sought her out to ask, “Are you OK? I know how hard it is to lose.”
“He was so kind to me,” she said backstage at the Nokia Theatre. “I didn’t know him well. But he was so kind.”
Bates, 66, said she was nervous while accepting the Emmy for outstanding supporting actress in a miniseries or movie, or she might have dedicated the prize to Williams.
“I almost wanted to say, ‘Look, I won this time. This is for you,”’ Bates said.
The actress, who won for her chilling portrayal of Madame Delphine LaLaurie, said the cross-over between film and television is creating more opportunities for character actors.
“I don’t think we would have a career,” Bates said. “I’ve seen more and more small roles (in films) over the decades go to well-known actors … a character actress my age wouldn’t always get those parts in movies. So selfishly, I’m glad it turned out that way.”
Asked what she still hoped to accomplish in her career, Bates said, “To make people laugh, to make people cry … to bring some humanity to characters who otherwise might not have any.”
Bates won an Oscar in 1991 for “Misery.” Her win tonight was her second career Emmy. She won in 2012 for a guest appearance on “Two and a Half Men,” on which she played the ghost of Charlie Harper, the character formerly played on the program by Charlie Sheen.
