He has been a fixture in Hollywood for decades now, but only recently became an Oscar winner for his role in 'Oppenheimer'.
However, that doesn't mean that Robert Downey Jr. is now too much of a big-shot to take on more mainstream or commercial roles.
The actor, who picked up the Best Supporting Oscar for playing Lewis Strauss in Christopher Nolan's atomic bomb film, has said that he is still open to reprising his role as Tony Stark aka Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Downey Jr. first played the Marvel superhero in 2008's 'Iron Man', and was most recently seen in the red suit in 2019's 'Avengers: Endgame'. When asked in a recent interview with Esquire if he would return to the MCU after his Oscar win, he said "Happily. It’s too integral a part of my DNA. That role chose me. And look, I always say, ‘Never, ever bet against Kevin Feige.’ It is a losing bet. He’s the house. He will always win."
However, Marvel president Kevin Feige had previously said that Iron Man would not be seen on the big screen again, as recently as last December, when he claimed that there was no returning from Iron Man's 'perfect' exit in 'Avengers: Endgame'. "We are going to keep that moment and not touch that moment again," he said. "We all worked very hard for many years to get to that, and we would never want to magically undo it in any way."
In other Iron Man-related news, in the same profile, Downey Jr.'s 'Iron Man' co-star Gwyneth Paltrow recalled how he would simply refuse to follow the script on the film. "There would be this process of [director] Jon Favreau and Robert and I going into Jon’s trailer in the morning and Robert being like, ‘I’m not fucking saying these lines’ and throwing them out," she said. "And then live improv-ing either in the trailer or on the set. I think in order for something to feel alive for Robert, it has to feel fresh, and he makes it fresh by making it feel like it was just invented. So many of those famous lines were written 10 minutes before we said them."
