Three Golden Globe wins and two Oscar nominations aside, Robert Downey Jr. is known by most as the superhero with the red suit of armor, Iron Man. But Downey is now wondering if it’s time to call it a day and move on.
“Everyone says to me it’s like a glove that fits so well,” Downey told News Corp Australian Network this month. “I have to start over every time but I am starting over with a pretty solid base. I just never want to blow it for the last six or seven [Marvel movies] I have done by dropping the ball because I decided to go do it one more time. I just want to hang up my jersey before it’s embarrassing.”
Not counting Tony Stark’s appearance in a number of films within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the three “Iron Man” films alone have grossed north of $2.4 billion. That’s a success that may be hard to walk away from for most actors, but Downey sees it differently.
“It’s this cyclical thing,” Downey said. “I could have said when the first ‘Avengers’ came out: ‘It’s never going to get any better than that. Everybody stop.’ But to me it’s always about people and opportunities, like the [‘Avengers’ directors Anthony and Joe] Russos, who I adore.”
Despite being unsure of his future within the MCU, Downey does appear in “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” mostly because he liked what the film’s director, Jon Watts, pulled off in his low-budget thriller “Cop Car” starring Kevin Bacon.
That creative respect carried over when he finally sat down to read what was planned for Tony Stark in “Homecoming.”
“I felt like we were literally back in the writer’s room on the first ‘Iron Man,’” Downey said. “So there was a real sense of a homecoming toward this — not experimental, because there is so much more data now and the process is so much more streamlined — but I didn’t feel like I was being asked to just fit in somewhere. They wanted us to bring our own little thing.”