Downey Talks Past…

Robert Downey Jr., star of the upcoming Jon Favreau IRON MAN movie, said in an interview recently that he’s aware that his personal history “resonates” with his character, millionaire playboy Tony Stark, who has his own history of substance abuse.

Oscar nominee and tabloid foil, Downey, Jr. is better known for his prison and rehab stints than for his performances in such critically acclaimed pictures as Chaplin and The Singing Detective–addressed the issues in a question with SCI FI Wire:

Here’s an excerpt:

“I think when someone has had a fundamental change, and they’re not just trying to backpedal and make it seem like ‘I’m going to rehab again, everything’s fine,’ whatever, … my thing is, what else is attractive [to me about the role] is, yeah, Tony Stark, he’s been known to go bonkers and be so irresponsible that he’s, like, too hammered to put on his shoes,” Downey says in his typical elliptical way. “And [when they approached me,] I was like, ‘Really?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, really.’…There’s so much stuff in this movie as it is that we decided not to do, like, the Pirandello thing,” he says, referring to the Italian dramatist and his play, Six Characters in Search of an Author, in which the lines between actors and their characters are blurred. “But I get it. In a way, that’s why it’s, like, ideally suited for me, and I’m ideally suited for it.”

Fans of the comic book series will recall a well-known 1979 arc, “Demon in a Bottle,” where Stark struggles with alcoholism, a first for a major superhero character.

Director John Favreau says that those parts of Stark’s character won’t come up in the first Iron Man movie, but will be addressed in later sequels.

“When we cast Robert–when he was approved and we got him to be in the movie and Marvel gave it the OK–it completely freed me,” Favreau said. “Because I knew I was halfway there to having a movie that I could be proud of. … I can’t think of anybody better than him. He brings a reality, a humor, a panache, … a life of experience. … There’s a lot of Tony Stark in him, and that’s so much better than trying to teach somebody to pretend that they are funny or pretend that they are smart or pretend that they are talented.”

Source: SCIFI

Sphere: Related Content