Robert Downey Jr. admitted in a recent interview with The New York Times Magazine that he was concerned his acting chops might be at risk while playing Iron Man/Tony Stark for 11 years in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The actor debuted as the superhero in 2008’s “Iron Man” and was killed off in 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame,” appearing in a total of nine Marvel movies.
“You start to wonder if a muscle you have hasn’t atrophied,” Downey Jr. said about the risks of playing the same character for over a decade.
When asked if he had any concerns about what effect playing Iron Man for 11 years might have on his acting, Downey Jr. replied: “Yes. 100%, and I knew there was a point where Christopher Nolan was endorsing, let’s work those other muscles, but let’s do it while rendering you devoid of your usual go-to things.”
Downey Jr. is starring as Lewis Strauss in Nolan’s atomic bomb epic “Oppenehimer.” Strauss served two terms on the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. He was the organization’s chairman during his second term. The film gave Downey Jr. a chance to flex acting muscles he couldn’t in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Nolan didn’t want the actor relying on his “usual go-to things,” which Downey Jr. described as “fast-talking, charming, unpredictable, blah, blah, blah.”
Working with Nolan also brought Downey Jr. back to a far more practical mode of filmmaking. Unlike the green screens and VFX-heavy work of Marvel, Nolan shot “Oppenheimer” with practical effects and even reconstructed the Manhattan Project village so that he wouldn’t be shooting the film on a studio lot. It was a welcome return for Downey Jr.
“Coming from that other place, entering the box-office-weekend-dominating place, then going into this spot now where I’m happy that I’m in this quality product — I’m happy that I regained my connection with a more purist approach to making movies,” the actor told The New York Times Magazine.
“He’s one of our great actors, and though a generation of kids know what a great movie star he is, they’ve not seen his subtlety and brilliance,” Nolan recently told the Los Angeles Times about casting Downey Jr. “I wanted to get him to do something completely different, to lose himself in another human being. When was the last time we’ve seen that? ‘Chaplin’? Directors are very aware of how talented Downey is, but because of his incredible energy that can punch through the screen, finding the right thing for him is difficult.”
Downey Jr. nearly lost out on the Iron Man role as his casting worried the Marvel board of directors. The actor was still on the outs of Hollywood during the casting process for “Iron Man,” having been arrested in April 1996 for possession of heroin, cocaine and an unloaded gun. Marvel was deciding between him or Timothy Olyphant to cast as Iron Man.
“My board thought I was crazy to put the future of the company in the hands of an addict,” former Marvel Studios president David Maisel told The New Yorker earlier this year. “I helped them understand how great he was for the role. We all had confidence that he was clean and would stay clean.”
“Oppenheimer” opens in theaters nationwide July 21 from Universal Pictures.
