By Nicholas BarberOptions correspondent
Robert Downey Jr is the favorite to win a finest supporting actor Oscar – however again in 2020, his profession had dipped to a low with Dolittle. Oppenheimer hasn’t simply reminded the world that Robert Downey Jr is a gifted dramatic actor, it is reminded him, too.
When somebody wins an award for performing in a movie, they often thank the movie’s director. However on Sunday, when Robert Downey Jr picked up a Bafta for finest supporting actor in Oppenheimer, his due to Christopher Nolan had been particularly effusive. Specifically, he paid tribute to “that dude Chris Nolan” for encouraging him to take “an understated method, maybe as a last-ditch effort to resurrect my dwindling credibility”.
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This comment raised an apparent query: why did Downey Jr suppose his credibility was dwindling? Due to his lengthy stint as Iron Man / Tony Stark within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he was one of many highest-paid paid A-listers in Hollywood, and he was credited for bringing a mature and relaxed sensibility to the superhero style – not least by Nolan himself. “He has such charisma as Tony Stark,” the director mentioned on The Late Present with Stephen Colbert. “Him enjoying Iron Man is likely one of the most consequential casting selections that is ever been made within the historical past of the film enterprise.”
So why did Downey Jr really feel that his credibility wanted a lift? The reply may be discovered on his CV, which reveals that within the 4 years between the discharge of his Marvel swan tune, Avengers: Endgame, in 2019, and Oppenheimer in 2023, he had acted in only one movie – and that movie was Dolittle, a disastrous pile-up of unhealthy jokes, gaping plot holes, painful accents, CGI animals, and apparent reshoots.
The movie, which was co-produced by his spouse, Susan Downey, was a flop, a lot to the horror of somebody who had come to see big-budget household journey movies as his consolation zone. “At that time I used to be bulletproof. I used to be the guru of all style films,” Downey Jr mentioned in The New York Occasions Journal final July. Dolittle was, he continued, “a two-and-a-half-year wound of squandered alternative”.
It was additionally a wake-up name – or as he put it, a “reset of priorities”. Downey Jr was in his mid-50s, coming to the tip of his motion hero years. However since 2008, he had been in 10 Marvel movies, two Sherlock Holmes movies, and never a lot else. If he could not launch a brand new blockbuster franchise, then what may he do? “I used to be at a spot in my life, in my profession, the place I wanted somebody to have a imaginative and prescient of what was doable for me that I could not see for myself,” he mentioned at a Q&A in February. That somebody was Nolan.
When the director was casting Oppenheimer, Downey Jr’s box-office attraction would possibly properly have been an element, however this wasn’t the primary time that he had persuaded a mainstream celebrity to stretch the performing muscular tissues they hadn’t used shortly: he’d solid Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar simply because the “McConaissance” was starting. “You are at all times seeking to work with nice actors,” he mentioned within the New York Occasions in February, “however you are additionally seeking to catch them in a second of their lives and careers the place you’ve got obtained one thing to supply them that they have not finished earlier than, or have not finished in a very long time.”
And so he coaxed Downey Jr to shrug off the armour of wisecracking, swaggering Tony Stark and to immerse himself in Lewis Strauss, the bitter chairman of the Atomic Enemy Fee who opposes J Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy). “I simply actually needed to see this unbelievable film star put down all of that baggage, that charisma, and simply lose himself in a dramatic portrayal of a really difficult man.”
A spartan method
The timing was good. Nolan needed Downey Jr to convey some restraint and complexity to his portrayal of Strauss, and Downey Jr was able to enterprise into uncharted territory. Emily Blunt recalled warning Downey Jr that the reserved and cerebral British director’s strategies could be fairly a distinction with what he had been used to at Marvel. “I mentioned, ‘You are going to simply adore it a lot and the screws are going to get tightened on you a lot and it is simply probably the most targeted, fantastic, unchaotic set. However you are going to get some very British compliments. There might be no smoke blown up your ass, and you are going to must be all proper with it.'”
Downey Jr was greater than all proper with it. “Attending to see the spartan, nearly monastic approach he approaches this artwork type,” he mentioned, “it was like going to the opposite aspect of the Moon.” On the Baftas, he mentioned that he owed his award partly to Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan’s “British sensibility”.
The good cash is on the revitalised Downey Jr following his Bafta win with a victory on the Oscars. However even when that does not occur, Oppenheimer has led to a brand new part of his profession. The movie hasn’t simply reminded the world that he’s a gifted dramatic actor, it is reminded him, too. There is a good likelihood that he’ll seem in additional of Nolan’s movies sooner or later. There’s a fair higher likelihood that he will not seem in something as excruciating as Dolittle ever once more.
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