In a recent interview, Robert Downey Jr said he was “relieved” not to have won the Oscar for Best Actor for his (terrific) composition in the film “Chaplin”, in 1993.
Surprising statement from Robert Downey Jr. In an interview dated this Wednesday (via Deadline), the actor said “relieved” for not having won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1993 for his performance in Richard Attenborough’s film Chaplin. He lost to Al Pacino, who won the statuette for Le Temps d’un weekend.
“I was young and impulsive” he comments. “If I had won, it would have made me feel like I was on the right track.”recalling that, in the wake of this first Oscar citation, he lived “30 years of addiction, depravity and despair.”
From the 80s to the early 90s, Robert Downey Jr. was one of the most promising actors of his generation. It was at this still bright time that he accepted the role of Chaplin.
Soon the consecration?
Although his performance garnered favorable reviews, the film was a very unfair and painful commercial failure despite Downey Jr’s enormous investment in his role, with less than $10 million in international box office revenue. Which did not prevent the actor from earning a nomination for the Oscar for Best Actor.
The only one to date, in fact, since the one obtained in 2009 for the film Thunder in the Tropics was a citation for Best Supporting Actor. It is also in this same category that he is preparing to compete again for his impeccable performance in Oppenheimer, in which he plays Lewis Strauss, an American politician who played a key role in the creation of the atomic bomb.
Recipient of the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor for this film, he has a very good chance of winning the supreme award on March 10, during the 96th Academy Awards. At 58, the time may have come for him.