Avengers: Age of Ultron
In this action film directed by Joss Whedon, based on a book by Whedon, Downey plays Tony Stark/Iron Man, whose attempt to create a peace-keeping program goes awry, resulting in the rise of Ultron, a psychopathic computer-robot hybrid. The Avengers unite to save the planet. Co starring Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlet Johansson, Chris Hemsworth and Jeremy Renner.
You never want to lean on things that you did knowing that it was like a back-up parachute. You don’t want to pretend there’s a back-up to that back-up parachute. And yesterday’s approach doesn’t necessarily work today. That’s what I really enjoy – that double sliding scale Spock Chess thing. How do you do it? How did you ever do it? How did you do it before, and how are you going to do it next time? I think, ultimately, it comes down to the very self-deprecating Mr. Whedon, who is more exacting on himself than he could ever be on anyone else. But he’s specific and in charge and I found him enjoying himself a bit more this time while simultaneously holding himself to a higher standard. You can’t do the same thing, only smaller, not as cool. There’s that other trap – where it’s, “Everything is bigger! Better! Do you know how many gigabytes we used in the opening sequence? How many terabytes?” Ultimately it comes down to that.
Natural Born Killers
Downey stars in this crime film written and directed by Oliver Stone. He plays a ratings-hungry tabloid journalist named Wayne Gale, who features mass murdering couple Mickey and Mallory on his TV show. As a result, the viewing public sees the criminals as cult heroes. The film also stars Woody Harrelson ad Juliette Lewis as the killers and Tom Sizemore as the detective that pursues them. On adopting an Australian accent for this role:
I just think that the Australian phenomenon reminds me more of American as with the British invasion from the ’60s. But when I was thinking about Kirk Lazarus I was thinking about Colin Farrell, about Daniel Day Lewis and about Russell Crowe and whoever was the most effective tool for whatever my thing was, I would use.
Less Than Zero
Downey Jr. stars as Julian, a struggling junkie, in the drama about the addictive tendencies of the youth of Los Angeles based on Brett Easton Ellis’ book. Rumors of Downey arriving on the set of Less Than Zero already high on the drugs he was meant to be acting with began to surround the film’s reputation and Downey’s. Co-starring Andrew McCarthy and James Spader.
Until that movie, I took my drugs after work and on the weekends. Maybe I’d turn up hungover on the set, but no more so than the stuntman. That changed on Less Than Zero. I was playing this junkie-faggot guy and, for me, the role was like the ghost of Christmas future. The character was an exaggeration of myself. Then things changed and, in some ways, I became an exaggeration of the character. That lasted far longer than it needed to last.
