TIME sat down with Robert Downey Jr. in his home in Los Angeles to discuss his three upcoming movies — Iron Man,
Tropic Thunder and The Soloist — plus comics, marriage and the meaning of life.Playing a superhero in Iron Man is new territory for you. Do you geek out on comics?
I can get into it, yeah. You walk in to the Marvel Comics offices in Los Angeles, and there's drawings and things, and toys, and these big posters, you think "Oh God, what a cool world this is," you know? I actually have known or met all the guys I've seen on posters at some point. And I thought none of them have come back and said "Boy, I really wish I hadn't done Spiderman," or, "You know, X-Men, and then spinning off into my own Wolverine trilogy, has really been a pain in the ass." They always seem like they're fun, and if they've done well and they're cool, it's obviously this kind of iconic thing. I wonder if Steve McQueen would have done one if he were around nowadays. Maybe he would have done it if he didn’t have to say anything. After all your personal and professional ups and downs, how does it feel to be at this moment in your career? I was getting out of the shower today and I'm thinking about this press tour I'm going to go on, and I think, you know what, I'm so punctual now, it's probably become a bit neurotic, just because now it's not so much about the principle, it's about maintaining the stats. But I was getting out of the shower and I thought, you know, I see myself showing up five or seven minutes late to these things, and it's under-f***ng-standable. You just came from Australia to Korea, you can't hit your ass for both hands, you tried to sleep on the plane, but you wound up watching, you know, A Bride's Tale, or whatever, again, and you're fried, and you're trying to shower, and you're like what does me — not that I need to blow-dry my hair, it's short — what does me not flossing or clipping my nails for my own sanity affect the fact whether we start on time or five or seven minutes late. Anyway, I feel like I can go in from there and go, "Listen, I was actually just informed that I don't need to be on time for these things anymore, because I'm about to have a really big year." I actually got this — fortunately — this extensive e-mail, telling me about a bunch of things I don't have to worry about. And punctuality is one of them? No, it's a fantasy of mine, that somehow I would be relieved from the onus of continuing to have a moral psychology. Like it would just suddenly be no longer required. It was a phase. What happened to you after you finished filming Chaplin in the early '90s? You'll see some of the youngsters nowadays, they come out, they do one big thing that everyone sees, all of a sudden, Spielberg says they're the one, or Scorsese takes them under his wing, and they go do four or five movies together, and that's the end of it — or rather the beginning of it. And then they acquire real estate, and show up at generic philanthropic centers once in a while to keep it all balanced out. Whereas I was just kind of went back to my life, and it was this huge anticlimactic thing, that basically took on different shades of either kind of like awe, wonder, acceptance, bitterness, or disassociation for the next — what year is it? — 17 years. And again, you know, my career isn't my life, but it had been this really huge defining moment for me. Less Than Zero had been where I felt like I demonstrated I could act. And then Chaplin I completely immersed myself in, it gave me this amazing focus. But there was this lull, and I never really found any momentum with where to focus my creative energy after that, so pretty expectable things happened. Did you have a plan? That was part of the problem. You know that thing where it's like, "You don't plan to fail, you fail to plan," everything is like some biker convention f---ing bumper sticker. But it's really ironic that I never had any real vision of where things were going to go. It seemed like oh, we're out here, we do movies, and we party, and it it's very incestuous, and a little vapid, but kind of cool. And I have a family and a history, and probably need a ton of therapy, and then by the time things — as they tend to in these cycles of whatever, seven, ten, fifteen, twenty year — things, you don't get it the first time around, then the Swiss train stops again in seven years, and you can make that decision again, the window opens and it closes. When you met your wife, was that one of those window opening periods? Yeah, but I didn't know how long it was going to be when I was having my Gwyneth Paltrow Sliding Doors moment. I didn't know that suddenly it was open again. When I met Susan, I decided I was a confirmed bachelor. As usual I had decided that something that was not actually my nature was going to be my persona. Just like the whole bad boy thing. You ask people who know me, Susan reads this thing that says, "Hollywood Bad Boy," and she laughs her ass off, you know? If TMZ had been around when you were in your 20s, what would that have looked like? If my peers and I had been put under the same scrutiny that certain of the newbies have been put under in just the last 18 months, we'd have been blown out of the water. Do you still smoke? I might have a cigar once in a while. There's nothing worse than a reformed smoker except seeing somebody die on an iron lung machine. But both of them are pretty despicable. So I really try not to be either. How did you go from the addict you were to the person you are now? If I try to explain it, then I'm imagining that I've figured it out. Well are there certain things that were helpful along the way? Well, yeah, of course. I am a kind of a spiritual opportunist, and I really think it's so simple, like I'm going to put my mind in my work, I put my heart in my relationship, and I put my body through hell so that I can like burn all that garbage off. I've realigned myself with whatever my quirky-ass passions are. I love history, I love martial arts, above all, I love my wife, and my kid. And I'm really, really, really good at this thing that I've been doing for 25 years, this is my silver anniversary. Do you get anything for your silver anniversary? Yeah, I got — look. (Downey points to his head). Look what, gray hair? A ton of gray hair. So as a matter of course all this other stuff was going on, some of which was very pleasant, and other moments painful, just like anyone else's real life, I acquired an ability to be real effective between action and cut. It's probably not that big a deal, and probably won't even flash before my eyes on my deathbed. It probably is not really even going to register in the things that I grasp for, thinking of like, "Wait, I never got to do Hamlet you know? It's going to be like, "I'll never eat another French dip sandwich." But, you know, I'll take the pride where I can. I feel like the future still has so much promise, and I think about writing. And I think that's the funny thing too is it's I've had a lot of ups and downs with my own personal development. Why did you just say that with an effeminate lisp? I don't know, it sounds like it should be on some effeminate talk show. But my work — but my abilities as an actor type, it's just kind of kept seemingly going into this tank, and it's just become easier and easier and easier.