In the four years since he drew his legendary Marvel Cinematic Universe tenure to a close by making the ultimate sacrifice in Avengers: Endgame, Robert Downey Jr. has made precisely one movie, and it sucked.
However, he did deem Dolittle to be one of the most important features he’d lent his name to in the last quarter of a century, for the sole purpose of allowing him to experience a colossal failure after a decade of nothing but sustained success, recharging his creative batteries to seek out daring material once again.
That comes to fruition this very week, with the actor winning widespread praise already for his magnificent turn in Oppenheimer. Christopher Nolan couldn’t be happier having RDJ back and firing on all cylinders, and revealed to The Playlist that he saw comparisons between the ex-Iron Man and the late Heath Ledger when he was gearing up to play the Joker in The Dark Knight.
“Your question reminds me of a conversation that I had with Heath Ledger many years ago when I was talking to him about taking on The Joker, and what he told me is that he needed to be hungry. He had taken time off and he needed to be hungry to act again, and he knew that about himself.
And I’ve not had that conversation with Robert, but I think there’s something similar going on where he was in a place where he was ready to get his teeth into something, and I think the best actors need that. They sometimes need a fallow period to fall back in love with the craft, to need to get out there and express something.”
Downey Jr. has always been one of the most naturally gifted performers of his generation, and now that he’s no longer got the comfort blanket of the MCU to wrap around himself, we can hopefully prepare ourselves for his next career renaissance revolving around a string of transformative turns.