Anne Fine isn’t a fan of Mrs Doubtfire. The former Children’s Laureate may have written the book, Madame Doubtfire, on which the beloved family comedy was based, but she had nothing to do with the 1993 big-screen adaptation that she once described as a “pantomime”. For one thing, she had wanted Warren Beatty to play the role of hapless dad Daniel, who disguises himself as an elderly female nanny after losing custody of his three kids, not Robin Williams.
“I was quite astonished that so many people loved the film, and so many children loved it,” says Fine now. “I found it a bit sentimental at the end. And it’s very different to the book – except they used quite a few of my jokes.” But the 74-year-old was, she admits, “impressed with Robin Williams’s comedy skills” in the end. Who couldn’t be? Think of the pool scene where he lobs a well-aimed lime at the head of his estranged wife’s new boyfriend Pierce Brosnan, then claims it was a “run-by fruiting”. Or when he shoves his face in a cream cake to hide his identity from the social worker.
