Page 47 - CelebrationsSpring2020

substance abuse, modest rehabilitation, incarceration and lost roles.
At the lowest point of his life, Downey found he had to set aside his pride and arrogance and humbly admit that he needed professional help. “For me, I just happened to be in a situation (for) the very last time and I said, ‘You know what? I don’t think I can continue doing this.’ And I reached out for help and ran with it. You can reach out for help...and you’ll get it, and you won’t take advantage of it. It’s really not that difficult to overcome these seemingly ghastly problems. What’s hard is to decide to do it.” With this mindset, Downey fully committed himself to substance abuse rehabilitation and he has remained sober since 2003.
With a fresh start and a second chance in Hollywood, Downey resumed his acting career, albeit with smaller roles and independent films, such as The Singing Detective, Gothika and Disney’s own reboot of The Shaggy Dog in 2006. Downey’s acting skills were always sharp but, save for Chaplin, he didn’t always have the broad canvas to showcase his talent. That changed in 2008 with his role in Tropic Thunder, a satirical comedy sendoff of war movies. His work earned Downey his second career Oscar nomination, for Best Acting in a Supporting Role. Once again however, he came up short in taking home the Oscar.
I am Iron Man
Downey’s career breakthrough came that same year when he donned the iconic crimson and gold suit of iron (well, gold titanium alloy actually, but “iron” sounds better), when he portrayed playboy billionaire Tony Stark and his alter ego, Iron Man. Marvel Comics had a long history of licensing its characters out to third parties, but company executives made the decision to move forward with its own film studio and self-finance Marvel character films. Kevin Feige, President of Production of Marvel Studios, reviewed the deep catalog of Marvel characters and tabbed Iron Man for the debut film. It was a project with risk. If the first film didn’t succeed, the future of the young Studio would be in peril. Jon Favreau was named director and he felt that Downey was perfect for the role of the brash, confident, and suave Tony Stark. However, he had to fight for him, given his past troubles. Said Favreau on casting Downey: “It was my job as a director to show that it was the best choice creatively. Everybody knew he was talented. Certainly, by studying the Iron Man role and developing that script I realized that the character seemed to line up with Robert in all the good and bad ways. And the story of Iron Man was really the story
of Robert’s career.” To help assure Marvel executives that he was right for the role, Downey – an established actor – offered to do a screen test. The results were exactly what Favreau and Feige expected. Favreau recalled, “Once we rolled the camera, it was inarguable. There was nobody who could say he was not Iron Man.” Released in 2008, Iron Man became an instant hit, both critically and commercially, grossing over $585 million. Marvel Studios now had a foundation on which to build, opening the door for the epic franchise we’ve all grown to love.
Downey was fascinated with Marvel comics books when he was growing up, and was magnetically drawn to Tony Stark, a swaggering, born-to-wealth, brilliant technologist who fabricates state-of-the-art suits that allow him to become a crime-fighting superhero. When cast to play Stark, Downey went all in, preparing for this role with the same feverish intensity that he used for Chaplin. Recalled Downey at the time, “It’s not so much that I related to him (Tony Stark), as much as I just presumed that it was my destiny to build this character around all of my experiences.”
Tony Stark is arguably the foundation of Marvel movies. In all, he appears in ten Marvel films, including the Iron Man trilogy and three Avengers films. The character of Tony Stark perishes in Avengers: End Game when he selflessly uses the reconstructed Infinity Gauntlet to restore order but succumbs to its power. In his swan song movie, Downey injected a bit of himself into one of the film’s tenderest scenes. Stark and his wife Pepper Potts have a young daughter Morgan and during a nightly bedtime, Tony says to her “I love you tons” to which she replies “I love you 3,000”. Later in the film, Start returns the same line to his daughter. What’s so special about 3,000? It turns out that it’s the special back-and-forth dialog that Downey shares with his own children.
Now in his fifties, Downey has settled into a calm and nurturing life. Avengers: Infinity Wars co-director Joe Russo commented this on personality compared to Stark: “You want the actors to have an emotional connect with the characters they play. When you really get to know Robert, you discover that he is nothing like Tony Stark. He has a public persona that he slips into, which is like Tony but when you have an intimate conversation with him, you realize he is very different. He is a warm, genuine and generous human being.”
For his contributions to Marvel Studios and The Walt Disney Company, Robert Downey Jr. was named a Disney Legend in 2019.
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