LOS ANGELES — Captain America: Civil War, which will hit the big screen very soon, marks Robert Downey Jr’s sixth appearance as Tony Stark/Iron Man.
The character has been good to Downey (who, incidentally, celebrated his 51st birthday yesterday). Last
August, Forbes announced that he had earned an estimated US$80 million (S$108 million) that year, his third consecutive year as the world’s highest-paid actor.
Audiences love success stories, but Downey’s saga seems too far-fetched, even by Hollywood standards. He went from being a promising young actor to an unemployable outcast. But then he rebounded to become a mega-star, respected by the same peers who once shunned him. It’s a tale of redemption and financial rewards, but it’s also a tale of artistry. Because even at the lowest ebb, nobody doubted his talent.
And it all started with a role as a dog.
At age 5, he made his film debut, billed as Bob Downey in the 1970 film Pound, directed by his father, Robert Downey Sr., who was coming off the success of counterculture fave Putney Swope.
In Pound, all the actors played dogs in an animal shelter; it was sort of like Cats, a decade before Andrew Lloyd Webber. In a review on Aug 19, 1970, Variety’s Richard Gold called it an “unfunny allegory.” He added: “The film’s one funny sequence has nothing to do with anything: Everybody just tweedles around in ballet costumes to a cheerfully obscene rock tune.” The critic didn’t like it, but his damnation makes the film sound pretty interesting.
As with most actors, Downey found work wherever he could: He appeared in his father’s Greaser’s Palace, John Sayles’ 1983 film Baby It’s You, the New York stage musical American Passion, and the 1985 gangs-in-school melodrama Tuff Turf, starring James Spader. In that last work, Variety reviewer Ray Loynd said: “Robert Downey is a fresh surprise in a nice sidekick role.”
That same year, he appeared in John Hughes’ Weird Science and became a cast regular on Saturday Night Live. He continued to work, but a big breakthrough came in 1992, when he starred in the title role of Chaplin.
Richard Attenborough, on Aug 17, 1992, said the actor’s performance was “miraculous, one of the most staggering performances I’ve seen in decades.” It’s standard procedure for a director to hype the star, but when audiences saw it, many of them agreed. Variety praised Downey’s work as “truly remarkable,” saying Chaplin’s unique abilities as an actor, dancer, mime and athlete would seem impossible to duplicate, “but Downey proves otherwise.”
Jodie Foster asked Variety, “Could anybody else in the world have given that performance? Robert is someone who is extremely brilliant but who is suffering because he’s almost too smart.”
Despite the admiration, Downey, Stephen Rea, Denzel Washington and Clint Eastwood all lost out on the best actor Oscar to Al Pacino for Scent Of A Woman.
From 1996 to 2001, the actor experienced drug arrests, a high-profile firing (from the TV series Ally McBeal), tabloid rumours and industry rejection, because his track record meant a film couldn’t get a completion bond.
In 2003, Mel Gibson paid the insurance for The Singing Detective, which started his career rebound; Downey underwent a personal rehab, crediting such factors as his wife Susan, meditation and 12-step programmes. (He stayed clean and was pardoned in 2015.)
His comeback was cemented in 2008, when he starred in the hugely successful Iron Man, and earned another Oscar nom that year for Tropic Thunder. His Sherlock Holmes bowed in 2009 and, while continuing to work in the Marvel universe, he starred in more personal projects, like 2014’s The Judge.
When receiving the 2011 American Cinematheque award, Downey said: “Sooner or later, if you pull the one-armed bandit enough, you’re going to come up with gold bars. And now it just feels, at least for a little while here, that the machine is fixed … I definitely had plenty of years of self-imposed purgatory, but I’m hot for the next 18 months or so. I’m coming up on 50 and I want to do more. And the franchise I could stay in love with indefinitely is Sherlock Holmes.” VARIETY.COM / REUTERS
