Christopher Nolan Says He Was "a Little Afraid" of Robert Downey Jr. Because of the Stories of How Crazy He Was
Earlier this month Robert Downey Jr. revealed that he first initially met with director Christopher Nolan for the possibility of taking on Scarescrow in Batman Begins. This was years before he was cast as Tony Stark in Marvel’s Iron Man. Downey Jr. said Nolan wasn’t interested in casting him, which Nolan fully admitted in a recent interview with the actor for The New York Times. He also explained that he was afraid to meet with the actor because of the stories he heard about how crazy he was. Nolan told Downey Jr.:
“I 100% knew you weren’t the guy [for Scarecrow]. In my head that was already cast. But I always wanted to meet you … I was a huge admirer of yours and therefore selfishly just wanted to take the meeting. But I was also a little afraid of you, you know. I had heard all kinds of stories about how you were crazy. It was only a few years after the last of those stories that had come out about you.”
Prior to Downey Jr. being cast in Iron Man, he was going through a rough patch in life. The actor was arrested in 1996 for possession of heroin, cocaine and an unloaded gun and given three years of probation. He was later sent to jail for nearly four months a year later after he skipped a court-ordered drug test. He also skipped a test in 1999 and was sentenced to three years in prison, of which he served 15 months. Four months later he was arrested after his release for drug possession.
Marvel Studios’ president David Maisel and director Jon Favreau had to fight for Downey Jr. to play Iron Man, and Maisel said, “My board thought I was crazy to put the future of the company in the hands of an addict. I helped them understand how great he was for the role. We all had confidence that he was clean and would stay clean.”
In regard to Downey Jr.’s casting, Nolan said that the actor “playing Iron Man is one of the most consequential casting decisions that’s ever been made in the history of the movie business.” He expanded on that a little more in his recdnt interview, saying:
“The truth is, I think Jon Favreau casting Robert as Tony Stark is one of the most significant and consequential casting decisions in Hollywood history. It wound up defining our industry. Coming out of COVID, you say, ‘Thank God for Marvel movies.’ And it’s one of those where, in retrospect, everybody thinks it was obvious. But he took an enormous risk casting [Robert] in that role.”
Nolan went on to talk about casting Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss in Oppenheimer, which landed the actor a Best Supporting Actor nomination. The director said:
“You’re always looking to work with great actors, but you’re also looking to catch them in a moment in their lives and careers where you’ve got something to offer them that they haven’t done before, or haven’t done in a long time. I just really wanted to see this incredible movie star put down all of that baggage, that charisma, and just lose himself in a dramatic portrayal of a very complicated man. I always wanted to work with him, really. Once I stopped being afraid of him.”