Robert Downey Jr recently received his third career Oscar nomination. He has been shortlisted for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for his performance in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, but in a new interview, he’s revealed why he’s glad to have not previously won the ‘Best Actor’ award in 1993.
Downey Jr is currently pinned as the favourite for the award after previously taking home wins from both the Critics’ Choice Award and the Golden Globes. Regardless of the outcome, Downey Jr is in a much better position to win a major award now than he was for his first nomination over 30 years ago.
The actor has reflected on his first nomination and how he lived his life then. He was nominated for his role as Charlie Chaplin in Chaplin, but still breathes a sigh of relief when he looks back and remembers not having his name called out during the awards ceremony.
“I was young and crazy,” he said on The View, continuing that an Oscar win “would have put me under the impression that I was on the right track.”
Downey Jr’s controversy in the 1990s is well-documented. He was in and out of trouble with the law before notoriously being arrested in 1996 for the possession of heroin, cocaine and an unloaded gun. The actor didn’t serve jail time but was given three years’ probation.
The star eventually was sent to jail as he had to serve four months after skipping a court-ordered drug test. He then skipped another test in 1999 and served a further 15 months in prison.
Due to his drug history, he was a tough sell to Marvel for Iron Man, a role that would see Downey Jr completely rebuild his reputation. “My board thought I was crazy to put the future of the company in the hands of an addict,” said Marvel president David Maisel. “I helped them understand how great he was for the role. We all had confidence that he was clean and would stay clean.”
Downey Jr is set to square off against Barbie’s Ryan Gosling, Killers of the Flower Moon’s Robert De Niro, American Fiction’s Sterling K Brown and Poor Things’ Mark Ruffalo at the ceremony on March 10th for ‘Best Supporting Actor’.
