Robert Downey Jr. recently stated that his portrayal as Tony Stark and Iron Man was perhaps some of the best acting he’s ever done. But he believes “it went a little bit unnoticed because of the genre.”
The news comes from Rob Lowe’s Literally! podcast (via Variety), where Downey Jr. appeared for an episode. While recording Lowe’s podcast, Downey Jr’s phone started to ring, which prompted Lowe to say, “Is that some Marvel s**t? Are you going to break some stories here?” After Downey Jr. said that the phone call wasn’t Marvel-related, Lowe began to joke about how he would like to represent him:
“You know what I say. That phone is going to ring, baby, and I want to be on that call. I want to be negotiating for you,” Lowe said. “I know what your deal is. Here’s what you do. You go, ‘I’ll come back, and I’ll play Tony Stark for you guys again since you f**ked everything up. But I want a gazillion dollars. I know what that number should be, and I want first dollar gross of every ensuing movie. That’s what I would do.”
This led to the two having a back-and-forth about how some of Downey Jr.’s projects haven’t been as successful as he was used to in the MCU. He then went on to say how he did some of his best work while in the MCU:
“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,” Downey Jr. said. “[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.”
Since Downey Jr. departed from the MCU in 2019, the actor has starred in other films. These include Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, 2022’s Dolittle, and 2022’s Sr.
For more MCU-related news, check out our story questioning if Echo will successfully pull off a great Kingpin plot and our story where RDJ stated that Iron Man was considered “second-tier” in the early days.