Robert Downey Jr and Christopher Nolan’s pointless first meeting: “I knew you weren’t the guy”
There are some directors and actor pairings that are as famous as the work itself, with infamous creative partnerships between Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson and Quentin Tarantino and Samuel L. Jackson. However, some partnerships seem as though they were destined by fate, despite only working together once or twice. And in the case of Christopher Nolan and Robert Downey Jr, their much-awaited collaboration on Oppenheimer felt like an unspoken destiny finally coming to life.
There have been many peaks and troughs in Downey Jr’s career, with an early rise to fame that quickly dipped and then made a comeback through his roles in Zodiac, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and predominantly within the Marvel universe through his portrayal of Tony Stark. Given the commercialistic focus of his projects, for a while, it seemed baffling that he hadn’t worked with one of the most mainstream directors, known for films like Inception, The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar, which are all hugely popular with mass audiences.
The pair first worked together in 2023, with Downy Jr starring as Lewis Strauss in Oppenheimer, a historical drama that needs no further introduction. The film went on to break box-office records along with the neighbouring release of Barbie, creating the infamous Barbenheimer weekend that has defined our modern era of film watching. Downey Jr subsequently won the Academy Award for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for his performance in the film, which was his first Academy Award win.
However, both artists have crossed paths many times before, and the two of them recently revealed that they had previously met about working on other projects that didn’t come to fruition. The pair met when Nolan was casting Batman Begins, around the same time that Downy Jr was set to star in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. The pair had intended on working together but unfortunately, something about it just didn’t click.
This was not due to scheduling conflicts or matters outside of their control but because Nolan simply didn’t think Downey Jr was the right man for the job. In a recent interview, the pair joked about how, from the offset, they both knew that it wasn’t going to work despite enjoying each other’s company and knowing that they wanted to work together at some point in the future. Nolan explained, “I 100 per cent knew you [Downy Jr.] weren’t the guy. In my head that was already cast. But I always wanted to meet you”.
Even while we can admire the work of other people, it just goes to show that casting is such a unique mixture of factors, and even if you love the work of another actor, they simply might not be the right person for the job.
But despite the fact that their first interaction didn’t lead to a collaboration, the pair somehow sustained a relationship for nearly 20 years, and finally worked together in 2023, reaping the fruits of their first interaction and decades long relationship.
