Robert Downey Jr says his ‘best work’ as Iron Man ‘went a little bit unnoticed’

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Robert Downey Jr has mirrored on his time as Iron Man within the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), arguing that the energy of his perfomances “went a little bit unnoticed because of the genre”.

The 58-year-old performed Tony Stark and his armoured superhero alter ego in 10 MCU films, beginning with 2008’s Iron Man and culminating with 2019’s Avengers: Endgame.

The following 12 months, Downey Jr took the lead position within the big-budget household film Dolittle, a famous essential and field workplace flop.

Speaking on Rob Lowe’s podcast Literally!, Downey Jr mentioned that have was a chastening one. “I felt so exposed after being in the cocoon of Marvel where I think I did some of the best work I will ever do, but it went a little bit unnoticed because of the genre.”

“[I] did myself a favor, because the rug was pulled so definitively out from underneath me and all the things that I was leaning on as opposed to what my understanding of confidence and security was, boy did they evaporate. And it rendered me teachable.”

Downey Jr didn’t launch any movie initiatives in 2021, earlier than returning with the 2022 documentary “Sr.” , which examined his relationship with his filmmaker father Robert Downey Sr.

He then performed Lewis Strauss in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, an acclaimed efficiency for which he just lately gained a Golden Globe. He is taken into account a frontrunner within the Best Supporting Actor class at this 12 months’s Oscars.

Last 12 months, Downey Jr’s Oppenheimer co-star Cillian Murphy known as him essentially the most “electrifying actor I’ve ever worked with”.

In an interview with GQ, Murphy mentioned: “A lot of the scenes I have with Downey, it was quite loose and quite improvisational.

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“I mean, acting with him was was was was just extraordinary. He’s just electrifying, the most available engaged, present, unpredictably brilliant actor I’ve ever worked with.”

Downey Jr at present holds two Academy Award nominations, which he acquired for his position as Charlie Chaplin in Richard Attenborough’s 1991 biopic, Chaplin, and for his comedic position in Ben Stiller’s satirical warfare comedy Tropic Thunder (2008).

In an interview final 12 months with The New York Times, the actor mentioned he was completely happy to have “regained my connection with a more purist approach to making movies”.

“Dolittle was a two-and-a-half-year wound of squandered opportunity,” he mentioned.

“Then old Chris Nolan calls, and getting to see the spartan, almost monastic way he approaches this art form, it was like going to the other side of the moon.”