Robert Downey Jr.’s Post-Marvel Balancing Act

“This summer,” Robert Downey Jr. says, “is the battle for the soul of cinema.” Like a lot of things said by the actor, who co-stars in the thriller “Oppenheimer,” directed by Christopher Nolan and opening in theaters on July 21, that statement was delivered with a soupçon of knowing sarcasm, but there’s truth to it. In a cinematic season dominated by series, superheroes and pre-existing I.P. all aimed at the widest-possible market, whether there is still a theatergoing audience sizable enough to sustain the work of a highly individualistic, highly ambitious director like Nolan — whose latest is a three-hour epic focusing on, among other weighty themes, the moral dilemmas faced by the title character, called “the father of the atomic bomb” — remains an open question. (In the film, Downey plays Lewis Strauss, the former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and the chief antagonist of J. Robert Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy.) As if that weren’t enough, the film also represents a career reset — famously not the first — for Downey, who in June premiered “Downey’s Dream Cars,” a docuseries in which some of his classic cars were refitted to be more eco-friendly. It has been an awfully long time since the 58-year-old has shown up in a big movie playing a major part that wasn’t Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man) or other would-be franchise material. “You start to wonder,” says Downey, a rollicking and digressive talker, “if a muscle you have hasn’t atrophied.”

Even though Christopher Nolan is a marquee name, a movie like “Oppenheimer” isn’t exactly a guaranteed box-office slam dunk. Then consider that in the light of a show like “Perry Mason,” which your company co-produced and which everyone seemed to like, but that wasn’t enough to keep it from being canceled. So from where you’re sitting, do you feel as if you’re able to make sense of the business right now? Since my ship came in in 2008, when “Iron Man” had that big weekend, I have been a self-described expert on the ways of the world of creativity and commerce. It’s not that the playing field changes — it’s that it morphs into something that you can’t even really call a playing field anymore. It’s a kind of mosaic of what it was moments before. If I am running a major streamer — which sounds like a big No. 1; how serious is it if the mind immediately goes to peepee? — anyway, you look at the budget, you look at the numbers and it comes down to a spreadsheet.

But how does knowing that affect your choices about what to make? You just go, “Welcome to Thunderdome.” I think it has been great in that we can all say that not one of us can entirely hit our ass with both hands right now, so let’s just keep doing what we believe is the best course of action.

Is it right that you’re remaking “Vertigo”? We are certainly looking into it. You know why?

God bless. I’ll tell you why. I have been rock climbing before and gotten stuck in that panic freeze, and if not for the sheer embarrassment, I would have asked to have been hoisted off that rock. I lost my confidence in my positioning, the drop was too far, my body reacted. It wasn’t fight-or-flight; it was freeze-and-about-to-faint. I’ll never forget it, and it made me think there are cinematic devices that have yet to be fully utilized that I think would provide an experience in trying to say, “What does it feel like to be psychologically silly with fear over something that should be manageable?” That might be entertaining.

How come? That drive that had been built up by being the kid on the other side of the fence — there was no longer a purpose for that. The water broke on what had seemingly been this unrequited thing. But what was requited? You realize you still have grief about a, b or c, or a not particularly irrational fear that d, e or f could happen. These external goals — there’s only so much space on the hard drive to function, and it was all geared toward getting this thing, and then when you meet it, it just goes, OK, big shot, can we get back to the process of unpacking a lifetime of experiences, fears, hopes, desires?

In that decade-plus when you were mostly doing Marvel movies, did you have any concerns about what effect that might have on your acting? I say that as someone who thought you did amazing work with Tony Stark. But you did play the same role for a long time. Yes. A hundred percent, and I knew there was a point where Chris Nolan was endorsing, let’s work those other muscles, but let’s do it while rendering you devoid of your usual go-to things.

I respect that there are things you don’t talk about in interviews, but can you make the connection for me between Strauss’s sense of service and your own? I’m not following. I’m saying that doing the right thing for the right reasons gives you an advantage in spirit. For instance, my son is in Little League. He also thinks I am his personal P.T. masseuse. I’m like, “Dude, I love you, but do I really have to give you another foot rub?” Once I get past that and realize, yes, I’ve had a long day but he’s probably had a longer day — there’s this sacred moment when he’s already fallen asleep and I’m still doing my shiatsu moves on him and you just feel right-size. You are getting so much gratification from this process of putting yourself in this position of service, and no one’s keeping score. That is something that I learned as I was tunneling my way back to being a functioning member of society, one teaspoon of dirt at a time. And looking at Strauss, I saw that he was a guy who had his nose to the grindstone and was a civil servant for decades. I have something I can relate to.

That tunneling-your-way-back line is reminding me of something I wanted to ask about: I watched this 2004 clip of you on “Oprah,” about a year after you got clean, and the subtext of the interview is that you were bad and now you have to convince everyone that you’re good — which is a dynamic that showed up in so many old TV appearances and magazine articles about you. I’m curious to know how you understood the public’s expectations for how a celebrity is supposed to behave in order to earn redemption. I remember with great pride that I was able to even address something like that in a public forum. Yet it would irk me deeply. It felt strangely punitive and unnecessarily humiliating. The challenge, though, is, yeah, so what? [Expletive] what you’re going through. Can you show up for this? There’s a great story about this guy — this would never play nowadays — he was in one of his last Zen trainings, and he was told to go to the lingerie section at Lord & Taylor and just stand there until women felt uncomfortable. It’s this idea of purposefully putting yourself in a situation where you will feel judged. The only difference between that misguided aspiring Zen master and me is I didn’t sign up to have that kind of experience. But once you’re there, you gotta roll with the punches. I am close with people right now who have gotten caught up in this iteration of the pendulum-like nature of culture deciding who is and isn’t OK. It is baffling. But yeah, shock, self-damnation, feeling exposed, feeling disabused of any progress you might have made — we’re also talking about me in my 40s and 30s, and there’s something great about pushing 60, which is I still have many of the old defects; I just know them so well. They’re like telemarketers. It’s like, “Come on, guys.”

What advice are you giving to people you’re close with who the culture has decided are not OK? I feel a bit fugazi when I’m trying to apply the metrics of the ’80s, ’90s and the early aughts to what’s occurred in the last five or seven years, but I think there’s usually a two-year turnaround on sinking to the depths of the Mariana Trench until you get back up to the surface. You come up too quick, we know what happens. There are many points in a comeback or being seen in a favorable light by your peers that, I’ll speak for myself, I wanted to happen sooner than it did, and I felt victimized by the timeline. But mankind’s greatest challenge is to be still. Stay on the bus. The scenery’s changing. You don’t get to decide where you get off the bus. The driver will let you know when you’ve arrived at your stop. But that’s that intolerable thing of how will I know when this nightmare is over?

How do you know? Because you wake up.

At the beginning of the conversation, you referred to “Sr.” as “content.” I’m guessing you wouldn’t use that word to describe “Oppenheimer.” So what’s “content” and what’s not? Pull out the list, and I’ll tell you yes or no.

“Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.” Not content.

“Avengers: Age of Ultron.” Content.

“U.S. Marshals.” Debatable.

“Back to School.” Not content.

Yeah. “Sr.” is so personal, but to everyone else it was a piece of content that they could have chosen to click on and watch or not.

How’s that different from anything else you do? Whether it’s a movie or “Downey’s Dream Cars” or your business ventures, you put things out there and people engage with it or not, right? Because it’s a way for me to let myself know that just because this may be the most important thing that I ever commit to a data card on a camera, doesn’t mean it isn’t [expletive] content to everyone else. You know, there’s part of me that thinks I should be a writer or an entrepreneur or I could blah, blah, blah. But then I think about it and go, I’ve made my peace with what I am at my core: There’s really only one thing I’ve ever been any goddamn good at. So to keep imagining that I’m going to suddenly transform into this formidable multihyphenate? I’m just starting to not buy my own hype. It’s about: Can I feel good about what I’m doing? OK, yes, then I’ll feel good about it.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations.

David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and writes the Talk column. He recently interviewed Emma Chamberlain about leaving YouTube, Walter Mosley about a dumber America and Cal Newport about a new way to work.

Source: Movies - nytimes.com