For more than a decade, Robert Downey Jr. has had "the most gifted actor of his generation" epoxied to his name. There was a time not so long ago when he also seemed to be caught in a continuous loop of addiction, incarceration and rehab. Now 43, he's turned his life around and actually seems to be living up to the accolade.
As the star of "Iron Man," Downey not only has the career advantage of being in a megahit, he is also a large reason for its success. How many great actors ever appear in these superhero lollapaloozas? More to the point, how many of them actually adorn such films with a powerful performance?
This should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed Downey's career. He has been in his share of middling movies, but I've never seen him work at less than full throttle. Even when he's in a lightweight vehicle like the soap-opera spoof "Soapdish" (1991), one of his early comedies, he has a radiance.
Downey's best performance remains his portrayal of Charlie Chaplin in Richard Attenborough's "Chaplin" (1992), where his intensity is paired with a lyricism that at times rivals Chaplin's own.
Downey succeeds not only because he has mastered Chaplin's movements but also because he never loses sight of the man behind the Little Tramp. His work here is a marvel of empathy.
Even before "Chaplin," Downey's work often had a Chaplinesque quality. In James Toback's "The Pick-Up Artist" (1987), he's a serial womanizer who gets his comeuppance when he falls for a gambler's daughter (Molly Ringwald). Playing a Lothario with the soul of an innocent, Downey captures the folly of romance as well as its passion.
In "True Believer" (1989), he holds his own opposite Mr. Intensity himself, James Woods. Woods plays a legendary once radical '60s lawyer who has sold out; Downey is his starry-eyed clerk, his conscience.
Downey gave a full-scale performance in Toback's "Two Girls and a Guy" (1997) as Blake Allen, a New York actor seriously involved with two girlfriends, neither of whom knows about the other until they accidentally meet in his loft (where virtually the entire film takes place). Downey is in top motormouth form here, wheedling his way in and out of half-truths with smarmy aplomb. Against all odds, he also makes the guy soulful.
Downey paired with Toback again two years later in "Black and White." Brooke Shields plays a documentary filmmaker investigating why white kids are so high on hip-hop, and Downey plays her gay husband. It's a daringly camp performance, never more so than in a comic scene where he comes on to the real-life Mike Tyson and almost gets pulverized for his troubles.
In the marvelous comedy "Wonder Boys" (2000), which stars Michael Douglas as a dissolute novelist and college professor, Downey has an indelible cameo as the writer's goateed, fop agent, who shows up for the campus literary weekend with his transvestite cohort in tow. (At the same time, and worlds apart, Downey began his celebrated two-year stint on TV's "Ally McBeal.")
In "Zodiac" (2007), Downey is a San Francisco Chronicle reporter undone by his fixation with the serial-killer case. Most obsessed characters in the movies are boring because the obsessiveness is monochromatic. Downey gives you a full palette.
He always does.
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