Things have changed for Robert Downey Jr. after putting an end to his collaboration with Marvel. The actor didn’t do so well with his latest film, the family adventure movie ‘Dolittle.’ He has always been a great actor who in his day was not afraid to play different roles such as Charles Chaplin or Kirk Lazarus in ‘Tropic Thunder.’
Both roles earned him the Oscar nomination despite the controversy surrounding the film directed by Ben Stiller. In it, Downey gave life to an actor so methodical that he gets surgical pigmentation on his skin to play an African-American character. This role fell on the shoulders of an actor who, at that time, was already beginning to grow in popularity as ‘Iron Man’.
During an interview on The Joe Rohan Experience podcast, the actor commented on his experience in ‘Tropic Thunder’, a film written and directed by Ben Stiller.
“When Ben called and said, ‘Hey I’m doing this thing’ — I think Sean Penn had passed on it or something like that, possibly wisely — I started thinking, ‘This is a terrible idea, wait a minute,'” he said.
“Then I thought, ‘Well, hold on, dude, get real here, where is your heart?’ And my heart is, a) I get to be black for a summer in my mind, so there’s something in it for me.”
The actor understood this work was an opportunity to criticize what his character represented. “The other thing is, I get to hold up to nature the insane self-involved hypocrisy of artists and what they think they’re allowed to do on occasion — just my opinion.”
In addition, Stiller’s work as a filmmaker gave him all the courage he needed: “Ben, who is a master artist and director, probably the closest thing to Charlie Chaplin that I’ve experienced… he knew exactly what the vision for this was; he executed it. It was impossible to not have it be an offensive nightmare of a movie.”
Luckily for Downey Jr., the industry and the public understood his intentions and only a small part of the audience ended up disgusted with this work. “90 percent of my black friends were like, ‘Dude, that was great.’ I can’t disagree with [the other 10 percent], but I know where my heart lies,”
You can check out Downey Jr.’s full words for yourself below.
