Carpe diem. With two words, a teacher played by Robin Williams changed the way a generation thought about poetry, school and seizing the day.
Released in 1989, Dead Poets Society stars Williams as John Keating, an English teacher at a strict boys’ preparatory school in the late 1950s. Keating encourages his students to think for themselves, to read poetry aloud, to stand on their desks and see the world differently.
Williams plays Keating with warmth and restraint, never turning him into a simple hero. His lessons are joyful, but the film is honest about the cost of rebellion in a world that prizes conformity, and its ending is quietly devastating.
It is a signature role because it distilled Williams’s gift into one character: a man who could make learning feel like freedom, and whose most famous line became a piece of everyday language.