Robert Downey Jr. in 1989 Photo: Getty
What did Robert Downey Jr. know? The former Iron Man star's decision to retire from the superhero business in 2019 now looks like the smartest career move he's made since he got into it in 2008. Downey's move into action films nearly 16 years ago was one of the most incredible comebacks Hollywood has seen in its history. while following a public and costly crackdown on drug abuse.
But if last night's Golden Globes are anything to go by, his departure from the genre may ultimately lead it. For his work in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer — just his second starring role since leaving the Marvel Cinematic Universe — Downey won the Globe for Best Supporting Actor and is now a favorite to win the equivalent awards at the Oscars and BAFTAS «over the next two months. .
“Lovers seek out the sun and get eaten. Power remains in the shadows,” his nuclear energy adviser Lewis Strauss memorably says in the film. But in his fifth decade in the business, Downey appears to be forging a third third path: a veteran who graciously steps back from the edge of the stage just a step or two, and in that semi-retreat ultimately finds his most flattering light. .
Of course, while his wrinkles and receding hairline were on full display as Oppenheimer's atomic energy adviser Charles Strauss, Downey looked in the full bloom of his professional prime — flexing the fine acting muscles that spanned his decade as Marvel's billionaire playboy Tony Stark , also known as Iron Man, was hardly called upon to be used. When I spoke with Nolan last summer shortly before the release of Oppenheimer, he was clearly excited about how Downey's performance would be received.
Robert Downey Jr. with the Golden Globe for Oppenheimer. Photo: Getty
“He is one of the greatest movie stars, and Jon Favreau casting him as Iron Man was one of the best casting choices in popular cinema in the last 50 years,” Nolan said. «But it's been so long since I've seen him play the truth and nuance of another person the way he did in, say, Chaplin» — the 1992 biopic in which Downey played the silent film star — «and I think his work here will shock people who don't know this side of him. And, frankly, even those who do.”
Chaplin was where Downey initially seemed unstoppable. The son of independent New York director Robert Downey Sr., he appeared in his father's projects from the age of five before finding his niche as a teenager with Hollywood's so-called Brat Pack. But breaking hearts and getting chicks to bed in films like Weird Science, Less Than Zero and Pick Up Artist is one thing, charming the Hollywood establishment is another. However, in 1993, for his starring role in Chaplin, he was nominated alongside such heavyweights as Clint Eastwood, Denzel Washington and eventual winner Al Pacino for the Academy Award for Best Actor, and won the Bafta Award for Best Actor. the male lead, beating out Daniel Day-Lewis.
For any actor trying to parlay youth stardom into something more lasting, this would be an enviable launching pad. However, due to growing substance abuse problems, Downey's adult career nearly came to a screeching halt.
Robert Downey Jr. in the film «Chaplin» Photo: Alami
He had the unfortunate gift of getting into drug troubles that would make for good writing in the tabloids: one evening his neighbors returned home to find the actor passed out in their 11-year-old son's bed (the boy was not there at the time). Then in 1996, he was stopped for speeding, but during a search of the car, police found cocaine, heroin, crack cocaine and an unloaded revolver.
«It's like I have a shotgun in my mouth and I have my finger on the trigger and I like the taste of bronze,» he told a judge of his addictions in 1999. it's easy to imagine him performing on screen. A potential stabilizing role on the legal comedy series Ally McBeal was lost after he was found by police wandering barefoot through the Culver City area of Los Angeles.
By the beginning of the 2000s, he was practically uninsurable — and, therefore, could not find a job. – and his best roles during those difficult years were achieved through benevolence and acts of faith.
Photo of Robert Downey Jr. in 1999. Photo: Kypros/Getty
It was Mel Gibson, who may have seen a kindred spirit in Downey, who paid the security deposit that allowed him to star in the 2003 films The Singing Detective and Downey's The Singing Detective. then-girlfriend (and now wife) Susan Levine, who introduced him to Lethal Weapon screenwriter Shane Black, who was looking for an available lead role in Kiss Bang Bang, his 2005 directorial debut.
His biggest test came two years later in David Fincher's Zodiac, when he endured (though reportedly barely) the director's famous demands for more than 40 takes of each scene. In a recent recorded conversation with his co-star Mark Ruffalo, Downey explained that he recently reached out to Fincher after «realizing a new respect» for him while working with Nolan, saying it was the first time he felt like he “legs set fire” by the director with a very specific and uncompromising approach.
With that in mind, a decade of supporting the world's biggest movie franchise was a piece of cake. Although the Marvel brand would later become synonymous with interchangeable computer-generated effects, snowstorms, in its early days it was based on star power, and Downey's charisma—even the way he could look at someone over the top of his glasses—was the core of the enterprise.
And while the commercial and critical problems of the bigger projects he was working on during his downtime at Marvel (The Soloist, The Judge) suggested that the MCU might be holding him back as much as he was, the extraordinary popularity of his The Sherlock Holmes films and his Oscar- and Bafta-nominated role in the provocative comedy Tropic Thunder suggest that the true picture was more complex. And while it would be an exaggeration to attribute Marvel's post-Covid decline to Downey's departure, one thing is clear: the series would not be the same without him.
Could he then quit acting altogether? His roughly $400 million franchise income, rising from a competitive $500,000 for the first Iron Man to a reported $75 million for Avengers: Endgame , would certainly make this option possible. And his seven-acre Malibu complex, with its small menagerie, stately guest houses and central «bungalow» — a low-lying, undulating concrete structure reminiscent of a sci-fi biodome that Tony Stark himself would live in — would be a good enough place to while away the years.
Robert Downey Jr. in the movie “Tropic Thunder” Photo: EPA
Instead, surprisingly, he jumped into another blockbuster: 2020's abysmal Dolittle, which made his post-MCU career suddenly unsettled. But if his multiplex-pleasing charisma was nowhere to be seen there, it was quietly put to good use at this year's awards show, where Downey has so far been one of the most charming flesh-attackers among the 2024 contenders.
And as Nolan noted, beyond the quality of his performance in Oppenheimer, there's the added pleasure of seeing a proven star delve into more complicated and less flattering roles. (Imagine how much fun it would be to watch Tom Cruise do the same.) As for the Oscars, they've long been scratching their heads over how to faithfully pay tribute to Marvel for sending the box office ringing throughout 2010- s — and paid tribute to the main character of the franchise. for his first role since then (not Dolittle) he would have done something like this.
Where the second Downaissance will go remains a mystery at the moment. So far, only one major project has been produced: a dark comedy miniseries set during the Vietnam War called The Sympathizer, co-produced by Downey and Park Chan-wook, in which the actor cycles through a series of American roles. military. The brief nods to Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove are both incredibly enticing and, after Oppenheimer, strangely appropriate. If he can convince Oscar voters to stop worrying and love the bomb, anything is possible.
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