In 1995, Christopher Reeve was lying in a hospital bed, paralyzed from the neck down after a terrible horseback riding accident. He was frightened, facing major surgery, and wondering what kind of life he had left. His old friend Robin Williams decided to pay him a visit, but Robin being Robin, he wasn't about to walk into that hospital room like an ordinary visitor. The two had been close friends since their days studying acting at Juilliard in the early 1970s. They'd watched each other become Hollywood stars, Reeve as Superman and Williams as one of the funniest men in entertainment. Robin showed up wearing a blue surgical cap, a yellow hospital gown, and glasses. Speaking in an outrageous Russian accent, he introduced himself as Reeve's proctologist and announced that he needed to perform an examination immediately. Christopher was so confused that he initially wondered whether the medication was making him hallucinate. Once he realized it was Robin, he burst out laughing. It was the first time he'd laughed since the accident. Reeve later wrote about that visit in his autobiography, Still Me, explaining how much it meant to him during one of the darkest periods of his life. He also recalled something he said to himself after that visit. "If I could laugh, I could live." Robin and his wife Marsha continued supporting Christopher and his family throughout the years that followed. Their friendship went well beyond Hollywood, and Robin remained involved with the Reeve Foundation. I've always loved Robin Williams for his ability to make people laugh, but stories like this make me appreciate the man behind all those wonderful performances even more. Sometimes being a good friend means knowing exactly when someone needs a laugh, even when there's very little to laugh about.