When Avengers: Endgame Maker Joe Russo Once Opened Up About Robert Downey Jr, aka Iron Man’s Unique Acting Process. (Photo Credit – Instagram)
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Robert Downey Jr is a renowned personality in Hollywood who added a new feather to his cap by earning the Oscar and every other award this year. RDJ is most popular for playing Iron Man, aka Tony Stark, in the MCU. The versatile actor is very spontaneous, and everyone has something good to say about their experience working with him. For example, when Avengers: Endgame’s co-director Joe Russo of the Russo brothers shared an interesting detail about Downey’s acting process. Scroll below for more.
Robert stepped into the role of Tony Stark in 2008, and the rest is history. RDJ is one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood, and a major share of his income comes from his Marvel projects. RDJ’s last appearance in the MCU was 2019’s magnum opus Avengers: Endgame, in which his character sacrificed himself to save the others.
The Russo brothers worked with Robert Downey Jr in three films – Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War & Endgame. During one of his appearances for Talks at Google, Joe Russo shared how Downey’s process differs from his co-stars, including Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson, who play Captain America and Black Widow, respectively. According to Joe, Chris, and Scarlett, their approach is very technical. They sometimes need only one take to do them. Meanwhile, the Oscar-winning star does multiple versions with alternate lines and picks and chooses from them.
Joe Russo also mentioned that the Iron Man star never utters the same line twice. The Avengers: Endgame director revealed, “Downey will never say the same line twice. He’s got a really unique process where he has an earwig in and an assistant who has been working with him for years. And what we’ll do is like a Sunday before we shoot his scenes for the week.”
He explained, “We’ll get in a room with him and the writers and pitch out alternate lines because he wants to keep it alive every take. So then he’ll do a take scripted, and then his assistant will feed him the alts, he’ll do the scene again with the alts, his assistant will feed him the next round of alts, we’ll the scene again with another round of alts.”
Joe Russo continued, “And what’s great is that after four takes, we can look at everything he’s done, and we can pick and choose and rebuild it, and then he’ll do it one more time with everything that seemed to work the best. That’s a very different process than, say, Scarlett’s process. It’s exciting to work with such a range of talent.”
Even the Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan was swayed by Robert Downey Jr’s charm. He believes casting RDJ for Iron Man was one of the best decisions in the world of cinema. The Marvel comics co-creator Stan Lee also said the same thing for RDJ. Therefore, people miss him in the role and often cry for his return on social media.
For more such throwbacks on your favorite Hollywood actor, stay tuned to Koimoi!
