Meet Robin Christensen-Roussimoff, The Daughter Of André The Giant

The actor-wrestler has wowed audiences with his performances in The Princess Bride and in high-profile fights. However, Robin Christensen-Roussimoff, the daughter and sole child of André the Giant, values his memory beyond everything else.

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Robin didn't spend much time with her father because of his tense relationship with her mother, Jean Christensen, and the fact that she was born while her father's fame was rising.

Before he passed away around the time she was 14, she met him, in her estimate, only five times.

However, Robin Christensen-Roussimoff is intimately tied to André the Giant's legacy as his daughter and has done everything in her power to uphold his reputation.

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When Robin Christensen-Roussimoff was born in 1979, her father André the Giant already had a well-established international wrestling career.

André the Giant was born André René Roussimoff in Coulommiers, France, in 1946. From birth, he was big, weighing between 11 and 13 pounds.

Andre eventually found out that he had acromegaly, a hormonal condition that caused excessive growth.

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However, despite the fact that his disease could shorten his life, physicians cautioned him that it also gave Andre his intimidating bulk.

He began his career as a wrestler in Europe and eventually traveled to Japan, Canada, and the United States. He stood a towering 7 feet 4 inches tall.

And he met Jean Christensen, a public relations specialist for the professional wrestling industry, in the early 1970s.

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In a 1990s interview, Christensen claimed, "There was no spark there," though she did add that, being a tall woman herself, she appreciated how Andre towered over her even in high heels. “It was just somebody I’d run into. Eventually, yes, there was that nod-nod-winky-winky thing.”

Jean alleges that when they were dating, she believed Andre to be sterile. However, when residing in France, she soon gave birth to a baby girl named Robin Christensen-Roussimoff.

However, Christensen and Andre's bond deteriorated soon after Christensen-Roussimoff was born. 

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Christensen-Roussimoff saw her father very little as a result of that and Andre's schedule. Only five times, according to CBS Sports, did she meet him.

The first time she saw him, she recalled at the New York City Comic-Con in 2016, was when he got a blood test to confirm that they were actually related.

Robin Christensen-Roussimoff was raised in Seattle with her mother despite being born in Europe. And André the Giant had a significant but uneven effect on her life.

“I can recall two or three times [that I saw him] at arenas,” Christensen-Roussimoff told CBS. “Unfortunately, other times, they were in court.”

Christensen-Roussimoff didn't watch Andre's wrestling at home, despite the fact that she was aware of her father's fame. Her mother didn't want her to grow up with an incorrect perception of her father.

According to Christensen-Roussimoff, 'She wanted me to form my own opinions on my dad, not what the media sold him as. She never viewed him as his wrestling alternate persona; only as "dad."'

“The persona never really touched me,” she said in a 2018 interview with The Post Game. “When I saw him, he was dad — because I saw him behind the ring. I didn’t watch the matches. I saw him backstage.”

In spite of this, Robin Christensen-Roussimoff was caught off guard when her mother took her to see The Princess Bride in 1987 without letting her know that her father played Fezzik.

“I was eight years old, and the funny thing is I didn’t know about it until it came out,” Christensen-Roussimoff told Sports Illustrated. “My mom took me to see the movie, and I still remember the scene when they were about to kidnap Buttercup. Very loudly, I said, ‘That’s my dad!'”

She added, “My dad was extremely, extremely proud of that role. In a way, he kind of got to be himself as Fezzik. He was very lovable. Everyone put their whole heart into their roles, and it showed.”

But the daughter of André the Giant spent more time with her father on television than in person. The only time they could get together was when he was at his ranch in North Carolina, and Christensen-Roussimoff was often reluctant to fly across the country by herself to see him.

“It broke his heart,” Andre’s friend, Jackie McAuley, told CBS. “It absolutely broke his heart that they couldn’t spend more time together.”

Despite the fact that they were physically apart, Andre made an attempt to communicate with his daughter. Christensen-Roussimoff recalled that he never "excluded" her from his life and that she never had any trouble getting in touch with him when she needed to.

Sadly, as she grew older, André the Giant's daughter never got to meet her father. André passed away in 1993 at the age of 46 from congestive heart failure brought on by his acromegaly, when he was about 14 years old.

“Maybe had he lived longer, I might have had a closer relationship with him,” Christensen-Roussimoff told Post and Courier. “Perhaps he would’ve attended my graduation, or been proud of my successes. I’ll never get to really know who he was as a person.”

Christensen-Roussimoff nevertheless contributes significantly to upholding André the Giant's legacy. André the Giant designated her as the only heir to his whole fortune when he passed away. She now gets a say whenever her father's likeness is used and is compensated for doing so.

After André the Giant passed away in 1993, his daughter continued his legacy in a variety of ways. Not only does Robin Christensen-Roussimoff resemble her well-known father, but The Cinemaholic claims that she is six feet tall and has dabbled in wrestling in the past.

She now serves as a steward for his reputation and image. Christensen-Roussimoff lives in Seattle away from the spotlight and keeps to herself most of the time, but she has been known to do interviews about her father and to go to conventions like Comic-Con to talk about his life.

Being André the Giant's daughter, though, can occasionally be a burden. Christensen-Roussimoff finds that rewatching her father's movies or matches is frequently tinged with sadness.

“There’s a lot of mixed emotion when it comes to watching his old stuff in the ring,” she told CBS. “I even have hard times now and then watching The Princess Bride. A lot of mixed emotions when it comes to that sort of thing.”

She added, “A lot of it has to do with the fact that I am his daughter. It’s just one of those things of, you know, it’s just really, really mixed emotions when it comes to that just simply because we didn’t have the relationship that we could have had. And a lot of it had to do with his work schedule. Yeah, it’s not easy to watch.”

André the Giant was many things to many people. He was an exciting actor who played in one of the most adored movies of the 20th century as well as a must-see wrestler whose size made his matches thrilling to watch.

Robin Christensen-Roussimoff, however, saw André the Giant as nothing more than her father.

And even though they weren't together while she was a child, she appears content to carry on his legacy.