Robert Downey Jr. stated his portrayal as Tony Stark and Iron Man was perhaps some of his best acting work, but he thinks “it went a little bit unnoticed because of the genre.”
This is according to an interview in Rob Lowe’s Literally! podcast in which Downey Jr. made an appearance for an episode. During the recording, Downey Jr.’s phone started to ring, and Lowe said, “Is that some Marvel s**t? Are you going to break some stories here?” After Downey Jr. said the phone call was not related to Marvel, Lowe started joking about representing him.
Lowe continued with, “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…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 resulted in a conversation over how some of Downey Jr.’s projects were not as successful as he was used to in the MCU. He then went on about how he did some of his greatest work while part of it.
“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.’s departure from the MCU back in 2019, the actor has appeared in other films, including Dolittle (2022), Sr. (2022), and Oppenheimer (2023).