Thanks to Robert Downey Jr’s starring role in Marvel’s Iron Man films Robert Downey Jr. became both an A-lister and an action hero. But a much younger Downey might have been a bit too shocked at what he’d eventually become.
How Johnny Depp and Keanu Reeves inspired Robert Downey Jr. to be an action star
Downey experienced a career comeback after being recruited by the Marvel franchise for Iron Man. Before being a part of the comic book franchise, his career risked floundering due to his past reputation of drug addiction.
Being a part of a blockbuster series not only helped Downey redeem his career, but gave him the opportunity to be an action star. It was a concept that Downey looked forward to after seeing what action franchises did for other actors he knew.
“When Tobey Maguire and I were doing Wonder Boys, we went to see The Matrix, and that was a big deal,” he once said in an interview with GQ. “I’ve known Keanu for ages. I watched the whole thing happen for him. Then I saw Tobey with his whole SpiderMan thing. And then I saw, in a different way, what Johnny did with the whole Pirates thing.”
But if you asked him at an earlier point in his career, a younger Downey might have been shocked at becoming a superhero.
Robert Downey Jr. once would’ve rather had a bullet put through his head than to become an action star dad
Downey once addressed the hypothetical scenario of telling his younger self that he’d eventually become a Marvel character. But the Chaplin star figured that perhaps a less mature Downey would’ve had one of two reactions to the news.
“Well, first of all, back then, the reference would have been Christopher Reeve. And Michael Keaton. Right? So I’d have been somewhere in the middle of either having a judgment on it or saying, ‘All right, cool people are doing it,’” Downey said in a separate 2016 interview with GQ. “But I know that I must have read those comics before, or they were in the atmosphere. So what I would have said was, ‘Ugh, really? That’s a second-tier superhero!’”
Similarly, in a resurfaced interview Downey did with Live! (via Contact Music), he confided that he became everything the younger him might’ve hated.
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“It’s funny. I used to say that I’d welcome a bullet to the forehead if I ever ended up as a 40-year something, remarried, marketable, big-action movie dad living in a cosy cul-de-sac in suburban L.A. Now I am that guy,” he said. “It just goes to show that I usually don’t know what’s good for me in life.”
Robert Downey Jr. once dreaded being a middle-aged leading man
At the time of the interview, Downey was already in his mid-to-late 40s, and had his eyes set on turning 50. But he confided it wasn’t exactly a milestone he was rushing to get to.
“I’m 46 now, so the countdown to my half-century has begin. I’d have to be completely deranged not to stress about that,” he said.
Downey was also concerned with still being a leading man in action films in his older years. He imagined it might not have been looked at too fondly by certain audience members.
“I think I just never wanted to be the creepy guy where people say, why do his leading ladies keep getting younger and younger and why do they think he’s so hot even though we know that the girl who’s playing this part actually has a handsome boyfriend? Anyway,” Downey said in an interview with Deadline. “But then again, I don’t even know what a leading man is, nowadays. I think it has always been someone who can carry a story.”
But Downey’s career successes made him reevaluate his stance on being a middle-aged leading man.
“I did have a little bit of a change of heart recently where I thought, there’s this odd thing that happens to men and women when they’re given great opportunity,” he said. “Some part of them that thinks it’s déclassé to not reject it, that that’s part of how you exude some sort of humility as you just self-deprecate or say that you have plans when it withers, sooner than later.”
