Robert Downey, Jr. Biography

Robert Downey, Jr. had a summertime blockbuster hit as superhero Tony Stark in the movie Iron Man (2008), capping a long run of films and overcoming a reputation as one of Hollywood’s rambunctious bad boys. After five decades in the movies, he won a best supporting actor Oscar in 2024 for the 2023 film Oppenheimer.

The son of renegade filmmaker Robert Downey (creator of 1971’s Putney Swope), Robert Downey, Jr. made his first brief film appearance in the 1972 film Pound, and became a young star in the 1980s in films such as Less Than Zero (1987) and Chances Are (1989). At the age of 27 he was nominated for an Oscar for his star performance as Charlie Chaplin in Richard Attenborough‘s 1992 film Chaplin.

Throughout the 1990s he made headlines of a different sort, piling up arrests for offenses related to drugs and alcohol and ultimately spending time in jail. Out of jail in 2000, he returned to the small screen on TV’s Ally McBeal, ( starring Calista Flockhart), only to get arrested twice more by the end of 2001.

He then bounced back again, appearing in smaller films such as Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (2005), George Clooney‘s Edward R. Murrow biopic Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), the animated A Scanner Darkly (2006, based on the novel by Philip K. Dick) and Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006, starring Nicole Kidman).

He followed his first turn as Iron Man with the Ben Stiller comedy Tropic Thunder (2008), playing an actor who has undergone surgery to make him appear African-American. In the following decade he played Iron Man again and again in films from the Marvel superhero franchise, from The Avengers (2012) to Black Widow (2020) and beyond.

The Iron Man role eventually became a recurring and lucrative gig for Downey, as Marvel superhero epics became a dominant power in Hollywood movies. Downey played Tony Stark in 10 different Marvel films, including the sequels Iron Man 2 (2010) and Iron Man 3 (2013), multiple Avengers films, and Captain America: Civil War (2016).

In 2024, Robert Downey, Jr. won his first Academy Award, as best supporting actor for his role as Admiral Lewis Strauss, atomic energy expert and political meanie, in the 2023 film Oppenheimer.