With three Oscar nominations under his belt, Robert Downey Jr. looked back and explained why winning the award in 1992, the year he was first nominated, would have been “the worst thing”.
Downey Jr., 58, was recently nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Admiral Lewis Strauss, Chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission, in Christopher Nolan’s epic film Oppenheimer.
The movie about the nuclear arms race swept the nominations at this year’s Academy Awards, receiving a total of 13 nominations. Cillian Murphy, who plays J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, is nominated for Best Actor, while Christopher Nolan is up for Best Director.
The three-time Oscar nominee was asked about his previous comments during an appearance on Wednesday’s (January 24) episode of the US talk show The View, in which he said that winning Best Actor for his performance as Charlie Chaplin in Richard Attenborough’s 1992 biopic Chaplin “would be the worst thing”.
He eventually lost the award that year to Al Pacino, who won for his performance in Scent of a Woman.
Speaking about his first nomination and subsequent loss at the Academy Awards, Downey Jr. said:
I was young and crazy and that could have given me the impression that I was on the right track.
“Whoopi remembers,” he added, addressing the program’s Oscar-winning host Whoopi Goldberg.
Goldberg replied:
We were together on that road.
Previously, Downey Jr. said he lived a life of “need, depravity and despair for 30 years” before making his comeback as the star of the Marvel movie Iron Man.
Oscar nominee and one of the world’s most successful actors, Downey Jr. made headlines in the late 1990s and early 2000s after he was arrested and jailed on drug-related legal charges.
The famous actor speaks frankly about his struggle until his recovery from drug addiction in July 2003.
Elsewhere on The View, Downey Jr. praised Goldberg, whom he called “one of the best scene partners of all time” and said he learned a lot about keeping comedy grounded from his Soapdish co-star.
Downey Jr. also said he “couldn’t believe” that his Oppenheimer co-star Emily Blunt had never been nominated for an Academy Award until this year.
Blunt is one of the contenders for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Kitty Oppenheimer, the scientist’s ostracized wife.
Downey Jr. said:
Of course I was very happy for the 13 nominations, but I couldn’t believe that it was Emily Blunt’s first Oscar nomination and that’s incredible.
The actor said Blunt learned of her nomination “while dropping her kids off at school” and that her husband John Krasinski “broke the news to her, distancing her from other parents.”
On Tuesday, January 23, the Oscar nominations were broadcast live from Los Angeles ahead of the awards ceremony on March 10.
