Robert Downey Jr calls Shane Black a “legitimate genius”
The actor Robert Downey Jr has called the director Shane Black a “legitimate genius” in a recent interview, as part of the marketing drive for the release of the Christopher Nolan movie Oppenheimer.
Working with Black during the 2005 film Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, appearing alongside Val Kilmer and Michelle Monaghan, Downey Jr thrived in the lead role of Harry Lockhart, a thief posing as a Hollywood actor.
Speaking in an interview with Vanity Fair about his collaboration with the filmmaker, he stated: “Shane Black is a night owl. Shane Black is a legitimate genius and he’d written what I thought was almost the perfect script, and then Val Kilmer and I had fallen into this good repartee”.
Later in the interview, Downey Jr expressed his fondness for Kilmer, expressing: “As far as working with Val on Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, he’s Val Kilmer, it’s vintage Val Kilmer. He comes in with such an off-centre point of view on things…I just found it so delightful to be staying up all night with Val Kilmer shooting these ridiculous scenes about these two oddballs”.
Downey Jr is in cinemas at the moment, taking a leading role in Christopher Nolan’s latest cinematic epic, Oppenheimer.
Telling the story of the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Nolan’s movie is a first for the director, being the first in his filmography to delve into a strict biopic. Starring Cillian Murphy, Florence Pugh, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon and a host of other Hollywood stars, Oppenheimer is one of the biggest movies of 2023, largely thanks to the online rivalry it has created with Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.
Take a look at the interview with Downey Jr below.
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