In a case of life truly imitating art, a celebrity impersonator sued by the mimic Robin Williams for being too convincing has agreed to stop posing as the Oscar-winning actor.
Williams — whose roles have included pretending to be an elderly British nanny in the film Mrs Doubtfire and an enlisted DJ fond of mimicking senior officers in Good Morning Vietnam — had accused his impersonator of duping a newspaper and a fire department into believing he was the actor.
But on Monday, Williams’s lawyer said the case against the impersonator, Michael Clayton, and his manager, Michael Pool, has been tentatively resolved.
”Each of them [Pool and Clayton] blamed the misrepresentation on the other one and they have each agreed they would enter into a stipulated injunction not to do it any more,” Gerald Margolis, a Los Angeles entertainment lawyer, told Reuters.
According to the lawsuit, filed in December, Clayton convinced a reporter at the Minnesota Star Tribune to do an ”interview” with the star, while the Punkin Rural Fire Department in Missouri organised a fund-raiser involving the phony Williams at which it hoped to raise $45 000.
The department had been convinced it was dealing with Williams after the person on the end of the telephone launched into a performance of Mrs Doubtfire.
The real Williams sued a short time later, demanding damages and asking a judge to order Clayton to disclose he is not ”the real Robin Williams” when he does impersonations.
The newspaper retracted its interview and the fire department cancelled its fund-raiser. Neither the impersonator nor his manager were available for comment on Tuesday. — Guardian Unlimited Â