Three decades after his first nomination, Robert Downey Jr finally received an Oscar for best supporting actor on Sunday, March 11 for oppenheimer -, consecration of a career marked by a long crossing of the desert.
This Oscar comes at the height of an awards season in which the American won a good number of statuettes for his portrayal of Lewis Strauss, a bureaucrat turned politician who orchestrated the exile in the United States of Robert Oppenheimer, the father of atomic bomb.
“I am grateful for my disastrous childhood and the Academy, in that order,” said the 58-year-old actor while collecting his Oscar.
The star actor ofIron Man was dedicated to certain Hollywood bigwigs, such as Robert De Niro (Flower Moon Killers) or Ryan Gosling (the Ken of Barbie). “RDJ” had already been nominated twice for the Oscars, for chaplin in 1993 and Thunder in the tropics in 2008. Between these first two nominations, however, the actor experienced the lowest point of his career, in particular due to addiction.
“Bundle of Brats”
Robert Downey Jr was born on April 4, 1965 into a family, his father (Robert Downey Sr) being an actor and director. Young Robert thus seems predestined to a career in Hollywood. He made his film debut at the age of 5, in the film Pound his father’s.
When he was a teenager, he was part of the “Brat Pack”, a nickname given by the press in the 80s to a group of young actors including Demi Moore. Her profile took a major turn in the early 1990s with chaplin, in which he plays the king of silent films. In addition to his Oscar nomination, the role earned him a Bafta.
But as his career experiences a seemingly inexorable rise, he finds himself drawn into a devastating spiral of dependency. He said that he first tried drugs when he was still a child, because his father was addicted to drugs.
His multiple arrests in the late 1990s were the delight of the tabloid press. After the failure of several detoxification treatments, he was sentenced in 1999 to three years in prison in a therapeutic center. The actor will remain there for a year. His personal problems cost him several roles, including the critically acclaimed television series. Ally McBeal.
But he finally manages to tame his demons. In a 2004 interview with Oprah Winfrey, she said her latest arrest forced her to reflect. “I said to myself, ‘You know what? I don’t think I can go on like this.’ And I asked for help,” she told the pope of American television.
Iron Man
He returned to the big screen in 2003 in The singing detective next to Mel Gibson, then gothic by Mathieu Kassovitz, with Halle Berry. The end of his journey through the desert, however, would not come until five years later, when he obtained the role of Iron Man, a superhero that he would play in nine films, until 2019.
With the success of the Marvel saga he reached a level of celebrity that had previously eluded him. In addition to the role of Iron Man, “RDJ” also took on the guise of a feisty Sherlock Holmes in two films by British director Guy Ritchie, with Jude Law playing his sidekick Watson. A third part is planned.
He will also soon star in a thriller about the Vietnam War, in which he plays a CIA agent.
Robert Downey Jr has been married for more than 20 years to producer Susan Downey, to whom he says he owes his salvation from drugs and alcohol. The couple has two children. The actor also had a son before his first marriage to singer Deborah Falconer.
Source: BFM TV
