Robert Downey Jr.

Interview By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

There has never been an actor who has experienced more ups and downs than Robert Downey Jr.. In the 1980's and early 1990's, Robert Downey Jr. received notices for his performances in films like Less Than Zero and Chaplin, the latter garnering him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

However, his promising career began to hit the skids in the 1990's as he continuously battled drug addiction, resulting in getting him into scrapes with the law. Despite continuing to hammer out great and memorable performances like on the Fox TV dramedy Ally McBeal and in the video for Elton John's 'I Want Love', Downey Jr. continued to struggle to get himself clean, causing the actor to often become too much of a liability to secure roles.

However, Robert has managed to finally free himself from drugs and has returned to doing what he does best with roles in films like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Good Night and Good Luck, A Scanner Darkly, and Zodiac. Now the 43 year-old has coveted what is arguably one of the biggest roles of his career as the titular superhero in the film adaptation of Marvel Comics' Iron Man.

We first asked Downey Jr. how he had been approached to tackle on such a huge role.

'I met [director] Jon Favreau and the guys down at Marvel and we realized that we were talking about the property,' he recounts, 'Then on the hallway, on the way out, we're looking at these posters they have of these films that have done rather well and the video game section and the merchandising and the kids' toys, books and things online, and I'm like, 'Wow! It should be cool.''

'Then I went to Jon and I'm like, 'I'm the guy that should be for this role, you know,' Downey, Jr. continues, 'And he said, 'Yeah, I think you'd be perfect, but I don't think it's going to happen,' and I'm like 'I think it's going to happen and let me know if it comes down to a screen test or something like that. It'd be a pleasure.' And that's how it went down.'

A fan of Iron Man, he felt absolutely no concern at all with the hero's seemingly B-level reputation in the comic book world.

'I was aware of him in those magazine kiosks and stuff, but what I love hearing lately is people going, 'Well, Iron Man was a second-tier superhero to me,'' Robert says, 'Operative word, was.'

Another issue Robert also had no apparent concern over was the script, which had more than four screenwriters contributing. He claims that the implementing of Made and Swingers director Jon Favreau gave him plenty of confidence in the very high-profile project.

'Well, how many guys who had done Children of Men was helpful,' Downey, Jr. claims, 'It had a dark sensibility, good story, and sense of humor, too. Often than not, a day on the set, we'd have a good scene and a good tag, but it wasn't.'

'Now that we were really there and doing it, and as long as it wasn't $165,000,000 or something like that, that was something that was going to go down the tubes if that wasn't something that we were going to make that was trying to be entertaining,' he adds, 'We'd do what Jon and I would be trying to do on a movie all the time anyway, which is enhance it and improvise and think of ways to incorporate different sensibilities into it.'

One of the many different sensibilities Downey Jr. claims Favreau incorporated into Iron Man was improvisation. During a moment on the set, he recalls how a dispute over a particular scene allowed the actor plenty of flexibility to spice up dialogue.

'Well, what happened was that they lit it one way and I came and said, 'Uh-oh!' Jon's like, 'Downey, what is it now' We got to shoot something!' and I was like, 'Why' I hate this scene when I'm like, 'Mr. Stark! Mr. Stark!' and they all crowd in,' he recalls, 'I see this and I'm hating it already. I see this scene and he's like, 'Alright, what are you going to do'' And this all starts from the scene before where originally, Tony says, 'Pepper, I'm back and I want to have a press conference.''

'Where I was like, 'I'm not going to say that. I'll say some other stuff and mix it in with that, but I'm not going to come out and go, 'Goddamn it, Pepper! It's time for a press conference!'' Robert continues, 'Cause I think, what does he think what he has to say. I don't think he knows what he's going to say. Well, anyway, I come and I'm like, 'Look, there's two things I want to change. Because it's the truth, I hear, when people come out of the joint and come back from long stance. That's what happened with me after we did this world tour and came back at the Waldorf and they were like, 'Mister, is there anything you would like on your cheeseburger'' and I said, 'Two things, I want a cheeseburger and I want a press conference.' So he got what he wanted and I didn't have to hit it.'

As any actor would tell you, playing a superhero is often a very physically demanding role. However, when asked, Robert claims his already active physical regimen put much of any such concern to rest.

'The physical part was I had been, for some reason or another, training for a couple of months before and I'd been in martial arts for five years now,' Downey Jr. says, 'So I was kind of up to speed, but wasn't. I figured if I was going to try to look like I was in shape, I might as well do it before I was too old to have it be feasible or matter. And it was a physically demanding part so the training really helped a lot. Sometimes, you just train just to be able to have to survive what you're going to have to do on the job.'

As Downey Jr. has been an actor more recognized as a critical favorite than a box office draw, we asked him just what was the most challenging aspect of working on Iron Man and whether or not he felt at all constrained by working on such a high-profile, multimillion dollar movie.

'I think the most challenging part was trusting all this gack and gear and hardware and stuff that's going to balance out OK with that kind of naturalistic way we were doing the acting,' Robert replies, 'I don't want to say that I'm not an artist, but my feeling about the way that I'm working is that it's an athletic endeavor.'

'My mind is part of it and my nads are part of it and my heart's into it, but mostly, to me, it always feels like I'm trying to make or beat a time and there's a lot of calculations going on,' he continues, 'So, to me, the hardest part was that this was a really big science project, so the algorhythms were really tricky.'

The film has him star alongside fellow acting giants such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard, and Jeff Bridges. One actor Downey Jr. touched on in particular of his experience working with was Jeff Bridges, who plays villain Obadiah Stane.

'Jeff came in and he would be like, 'Guys, we should improvise on this scene,'' he recounts, 'And we're like, we are shooting in two weeks. We're like still figuring out what the sequences are and we're like, 'We got two raptors and he's fighting the F22's and'what' How' Why'' And Jeff's like, 'I got this Alan Watts lecture I downloaded on my IPod and we should listen to it.' And it's like two hours and ten minutes.

'So anyway, he wound up really, really bringing us to where we felt like we had permission to do what we all wanted to do anyway, which was get to know each other and talk about this stuff,' Robert continues, 'He's like, 'I'm not fixing the show up right here and be like that two-dimensional bad guy.' But what kind of happens is he's like The Dude meets Doctor Doom. It's awesome. We talk about that Tocamac reactor. Every time we got into a thing about what does that mean, it's hard to say what has value when you're in the clinch and it really was just some of my favorite stuff because I've come up and I'm a little younger than Jeff, but he's always someone I've seen as have this very interesting, balanced career. And he's just a national treasure.'

One of the biggest double-edged swords of adapting something as massively popular as Iron Man is living up to fans' expectations. We asked the actor if he or Favreau felt any pressure about that.

'The origin story is pretty clear and you update it and you try to modernize it and make it watchable and stuff,' Robert replies, 'But pretty much from the time I was cast and stuff until they saw the first mark one suit, it's just a kind of crazy Senate in a democracy where their votes have to count for a lot more. But by the time we were at Comic-Con and we showed them some footage, we were like, 'OK, our sensibilities are finding this compatibility.' It speaks more to Jon and I being geeks at heart than we were (gasps) pressure-molding our movie into what we thought they wanted.'

He also adds that with that in mind, he and Favreau both tried as often as they could to exceed audience expectations, such as revealing Iron Man's secret identity.

'We had no idea how it was going to go at the end,' Downey, Jr. claims, 'We just figured that by the time we got there, it didn't make sense for him to be like go out and tell the cover story with the camera. We tried to do everything else so counter-intuitively at that point, so that day, there was a choice and Jon was like, 'We should just let the cat out of the bag because that's our way. We took all these things in a very, very simple and well-plotted origin story and then we tried to flip the expectation as often as we could.'

However, Robert says was pleased by the audience reactions during the many early screenings for the film overseas.

'I've seen it a couple of times,' he says, 'I had seen it around the world here and there and often times, it sucks because they start the credits and we entered in the movie and then, we've hustled out to do some show. The coolest thing for me was Jon and I after the end of a twelve hour day. They gotten into some cars in Seoul, Korea and went to a military base and did an impromptu screening for some of the servicemen and women and their kids. And that was something else that really shot in the ass, you know.'

When asked about the possibility of being on board for Iron Man sequel, Robert says his great rapport with Jon Favreau on this film leaves him very open to it and excited about how the movie may possibly continue.

'Jon and I have become brothers,' Robert believes, 'We're practically like each other's wives when our wives aren't there. But what always is interesting me about any ideas is who I'm working with and how far we can take this. And you can't take something that is one of any further, so you go do something else.'

'And this is the first opportunity I have, we've been talking about this most ass-kicking opening sequence if we were to do another one,' he adds, 'We've also been talking about sensibilities in Europe and around the world and we've gotten some political feedback, which is ridiculous, because it's a fantastic idea. Oftentimes, the first one is where you get the mistakes out of the way and if you get repeat customers, I don't want to say relaxed, because Jon and I grilled and rode each other like jockeys at every point in the game here.'

Downey Jr. notes that the best aspect from having worked on a high-profile project like Iron Man is that he and Favreau approached it with the same level of care and dedication as they would a much smaller and more character-driven film.

'I know I sound like I'm talking about an art movie, but we really were like what does it mean and what do we say when we say that and who does,' Robert exclaims, 'These little riffs we went on and trying to make things more real. It's just really great to see an audience go, I really like that part and that came from this desperation we had to try to do something that really wasn't your typical two-dimensional genre movie.'

Finally, we asked the venerated actor if he personally learned anything from working on the film. The following answer Robert gives just goes to show that no matter what kind of film you work on, be it an independent or a big-budget, tent-pole film like Iron Man, there is never a shortage of the new things you can learn as an actor.

'The most recent thing I've been thinking about is that if you're not on your team, why should you expect anyone else to be,' he believes, 'And that something like this, which was considered out of the box for me. I think that's what we're all here to try to do is change our expectations of ourselves and react to that. I have a great metaphor. The fisherman's wharf in San Francisco, there's this tank full of crabs, then you go pick them out, this and that, and they're all kind of hanging out at the bottom.'

'And once in a while, you'll see this crab flip up to the top and gets the little thing over and you think someone would come over and would have to get back in and put the top back on,' Downey Jr. continues, 'But you don't really have to, because I sat in there watching it for a while. Every time we want to get to the top, the crabs would just go and pull them back down themselves. So you got to try and get out of the tank.'