Robert Downey Jr names the worst audition of his career: “I just stood up and walked out”
After decades in the industry, Robert Downey Jr secured his first Oscar at the 2024 Academy Awards ceremony, taking home ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for his role in Oppenheimer. Yet, many might have been surprised that the star hadn’t won a prize from the prestigious institution sooner, considering that he has appeared in many acclaimed roles since the 1980s.
He starred in various comedies during the early years of his career, including Weird Science, Back to School, and The Pick-Up Artist, before landing more prominent roles in the following decade. 1992 proved to be a life-changing year for Downey Jr, who secured the main role in Chaplin, Richard Attenborough’s biopic on the iconic silent movie star Charlie Chaplin. Playing such a singular and influential talent wasn’t the easiest of tasks, but Downey Jr mastered the part and earned several awards, including a Bafta.
His career began to pick up speed when he subsequently started working with even more acclaimed filmmakers, like Robert Altman, who directed him in Short Cuts, and Oliver Stone, appearing in his movie Natural Born Killers. From A Scanner Darkly and Zodiac to Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes, Tropic Thunder, and The Avengers, the actor has left an indelible mark on Hollywood.
Downey Jr has successfully played many iconic characters during his time, carving out a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most well-known stars. As Iron Man, otherwise known as Tony Stark, he has appeared in many Marvel movies and become one of the company’s most beloved characters, and it is hard to imagine the Marvel Cinematic Universe without him.
But to get to this point in his career, the actor has had his fair share of bad experiences. He has starred in some less-than-impressive movies, like the critically derided Air America, Friends & Lovers, and Johnny Be Good, none of which have endured as some of his finest or most memorable works. That’s just part and parcel of being an actor, though; you never know which movies are going to succeed and which won’t even make a dent in the box office.
He has quickly walked out of an audition on at least one occasion, too, realising that he was potentially signing himself up for something that would’ve been a huge mistake. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he revealed, “I went in for a Dr Pepper commercial. They came out in the hallway and they said, ‘OK, you’re the pied piper and everybody wants to be like you.’ And I just stood up and walked out of there.”
While the Dr Pepper commercial wasn’t the right fit for Downey Jr, he’s not against appearing in an advertisement if it’s the right kind. The actor, despite being an acclaimed, award-winning star, has actually lent himself to various ads over the years, such as for the cybersecurity company Aura and Amazon Echos, playing his character from the movie Doolittle in the latter.
Perhaps Downey Jr should have had the same attitude he harnessed while walking into the Dr Pepper audition before accepting roles in several films that went on to be major flops. That’s just the nature of Hollywood, however, and luckily, missing out on that Dr Pepper commercial didn’t prevent the actor from becoming a popular star.
