Award-winning US actor Glenn Close has made a startling claim about late comedian Robin Williams, speculating he would still be alive if his close friend Christopher Reeve ‘‘was still around’’.

One of several interviewees featured in Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, which made its global premiere this month at the Sundance Film Festival, Close was reflecting on Reeve’s life and legacy.

“I always felt that if Chris was still around, Robin would still be alive,” Close said.

Reeve died in 2004 from cardiac arrest at age 52, nine years after a spinal cord injury from a horseback riding accident left him paralysed, in a wheelchair and dependent on a ventilator to breathe.

A decade later, Williams, who had coped with mental health struggles throughout his prolific screen career, died by suicide at age 63 in 2014.

It wasn’t until after his death that an autopsy revealed advanced stages of Lewy body dementia, a less common form of dementia that affects an estimated 1.4 million people in the US.

It’s not the first time Close has made such a heartbreaking observation.

“Their friendship, their connection, is the stuff of legend. It not only endured, but became a life-giving force sustaining them both,” Close said in an emotional speech at the 2017 Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation gala dinner in New York City.

“I am convinced that if Chris were still with us, Robin would be too,” said Close, who starred in the 1997 TV movie, In the Gloaming, directed by Reeve.

“My first connection to Christopher Reeve was through Robin Williams, when we were shooting The World According to Garp,” Close said.

“On Friday evenings, Chris would literally swoop in, piloting his own plane, scoop Robin up, and away they would fly for the weekend. On Sunday, late afternoon, Chris would swoop back in and deliver Robin back – I have to say a little worse for wear.

“Those were the heady days for them both.

“They were on top of the world.

“They were living the kind of fast and crazy life that our business can hand to you if you become a wildly famous phenomenon, practically overnight.”

Karen Akers, Christopher Reeve and Robin Williams during a Circle Repertory Theatre Benefit in New York in 1985. Photo: Getty

A life-long bromance

After studying and rooming with Reeve at New York’s Juilliard School starting in 1973, Williams – who won an Oscar for best supporting actor in 1998 for Good Will Hunting – developed a close friendship with the Superman star.

In his 1998 memoir, Still Me, Reeve wrote about those early days together, and the life-long bond formed.

“The first person I met at Juilliard was the other advanced student, a short, stocky, long-haired fellow from Marin County, California, who wore tie-dyed shirts with tracksuit bottoms and talked a mile a minute,” wrote Reeve, in an extract published by blogger Danny Dutch.

“I’d never seen so much energy contained in one person. He was like an untied balloon that had been inflated and immediately released.

“There was never a moment when he wasn’t doing voices, imitating teachers, and making our faces ache from laughing at his antics. His name, of course, was Robin Williams,” Reeve wrote.

Williams was quickly on the radar and snapped up, scored a TV gig playing sweet-tempered alien in Mork and Mindy, while Reeve – who auditioned for Superman (1978) with black Nugget [shoe polish] in his hair – won the gig and the hearts of fans around the world.

“Robin was able to share his real feelings with me, and I always did the same with him. This has remained true for 25 years,” he wrote.

Robin Williams with Christopher Reeve, wife Dana Reeve and son Will at the screening of House Of D at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival. Photo: Getty

Reeve’s life-altering horse accident

After discovering the love of horse riding and competing at equestrian events in the 1980s, Reeve writes that while filming Village of the Damned in 1994, he decided to train and compete in horse events on a regular basis.

He was also preparing to act in Kidnapped, produced by Francis Ford Coppola.

On May 27, Reeve was thrown from his horse, Buck, who put the brakes on for some unknown reason during an equestrian competition in Culpeper, Virginia.

“My helmet prevented any brain damage, but the impact of the landing broke my first and second vertebrae. This is called a hangman’s injury because it’s the kind of break that happens when the trapdoor opens and the noose snaps tight,” Reeve wrote in another excerpt published by Penguin.

“It was as if I’d been hanged, cut down, and then sent to a hospital. I was heard to say, ‘I can’t breathe’, and that was it.”

Williams was by his side and visited his friend regularly in hospital and on one occasion pretended to be a proctologist in one surprise visit.

“I came in as a Russian proctologist, put on a glove and said, ‘We’re going to have to examine this thing’,” the late actor recalls.

Williams also was a huge supporter of Reeve at several events over the years for The Christopher Reeve Foundation.

In Williams’ 2018 biography Robin, Vanity Fair observed that in the months that preceded his death, he “faced daunting challenges, both professionally and personally”.

“His film career had stalled, and his comeback sitcom, The Crazy Ones, was failing to find an audience on CBS. He was still harbouring guilt about his divorce from Marsha Garces, his second wife and mother of two of his children, and adjusting to life with his new wife, Susan Schneider, whom he married in 2011,” VF wrote.

He was also “reeling from a cataclysmic diagnosis” – in May 2014 he had been told that he had Parkinson’s disease, news that “stunned and overwhelmed the once-nimble comedian”.

His eventual suicide sent shockwaves around the world and he remains front and centre as one of the most iconic comedians and actors in the entertainment industry.

A year after Reeve’s death, Williams dedicated his 2005 Cecil B DeMille award at the Golden Globes to his friend, who once said Williams was a gift to the world.

“May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest, sweet prince.”