Robert Downey Jr names the smartest actor in Hollywood: “Teach me the secrets”
There are a number of factors that need to work in perfect synchronicity to facilitate any actor’s rise to the top of the business, and intelligence doesn’t necessarily have to be one of them. Robert Downey Jr has always come across as a razor-sharp kind of guy, so he didn’t need to worry about it.
However, his self-destructive tendencies were an entirely different matter. The second-generation star may have been switched on, but he was also far too prone to letting his worst habits get the better of him. It rendered him an irrelevancy and afterthought by the turn of the millennium, only for Downey Jr to reinvent himself with one of Hollywood’s most incredible comeback stories.
It might sound unfair, but anybody who says there aren’t certain actors they look at and think, “I don’t buy for a second that this guy could tie their shoes unattended,” is a liar. Whether it’s the characters they play, how they come across in public and in interviews, or a repeated habit of putting their whole foot into their mouth, some stars just seem like idiots.
Keanu Reeves does not, even if it’s something that’s been weaponised against him for decades. Thanks to his breakout role as an open-mouthed slacker in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure – which was released in the late 1980s, just to point that out – he’s regularly been perceived and denigrated by a doe-eyed plank of wood who also happens to be one of the most wholesome folks on the planet.
Obviously, that’s not the case, but being tarred with a certain brush early on makes it increasingly difficult to wash away those stains. Nobody in good conscience would accuse Reeves of having a head full of rocks, but for somebody who’s clearly smart enough to have spent almost 40 years as a household name and generated billions of dollars at the box office, he’s got a solid head on his shoulders.
Would he be the name that instantly comes to mind when thinking of the smartest person in Hollywood? Maybe, maybe not, but it’s clear where Downey Jr’s feelings lie. “I just looked at Keanu and said, ‘Neo, teach me the secrets of seeing behind the mask of reality,'” he told Emanuel Levy in reference to both his signature role in The Matrix and his ability to successfully navigate the public and political minefield of the business without ever coming close to being caught in its perilous jaws.
“When you talk to him,” Downey Jr continued. “You can tell he’s the most well-read and self-educated of all of us.” He’s evolved from pretty boy to veteran without losing a step or having his star power diminish, which is just one reason why Reeves is a lot smarter, savvier, and switched-on than he often gets credit for.
