The first “real director” Robert Downey Jr worked with
Since beginning his acting career at just five years old under the direction of his father, Robert Downey Jr has become one of the most well-known names in Hollywood. After making his debut in 1970, Downey Jr continued to pursue acting well into adulthood, appearing in cult comedy classics, crime flicks, and even Shakespeare adaptations. Still, Downey Jr would be 37 years into his career before he felt like he had worked with a “real” director.
In 2007, just one year before he embarked upon the role of a lifetime as Tony Stark, Downey Jr landed a role in Zodiac. Starring opposite Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo, he took on the real-life character of Paul Avery, a journalist reporting on the crimes of the Zodiac killer. On set, the stars were subject to the meticulous and masterful direction of David Fincher, an experience which was new to Downey Jr.
The filmmaker is widely known for his countless takes and directorial perfectionism, and Zodiac was no exception. On one occasion, as Downey Jr and Ruffalo recalled in a recent conversation for Variety, the actors completed 60 takes of a scene before Fincher scrapped every single one. Ruffalo even joked that he “invented the delete button”.
While the actors may have struggled through long shoots and innumerable retakes at the time, Downey Jr has since developed a “new respect” for Fincher’s calculated filmmaking style. “I called Fincher recently because, in retrospect, everything changes,” he explained, “It’s like 15 years later, you have such a different perspective.”
Particularly after working with the equally precise and masterful filmmaker Christopher Nolan on Oppenheimer, the actor realised just how talented Fincher was at his craft. He even named Zodiac as the first time he had worked with a so-called “real” director. “I remember that was maybe the first time we really had our feet put to the fire with an exacting director,” he reminisced, “A real director, who does things a certain way.”
The result of Fincher’s exact vision and repeated takes was one of the greatest films of Downey Jr’s career. In every shot of Zodiac, in every nuance of Downey Jr’s performance, the director’s precise vision for the story’s unfolding shines through.
Particularly amidst the endlessly recycled Marvel movies that would follow, Zodiac was a welcome venture into refined filmmaking for Downey Jr. Over a decade later, with his acclaimed role as Lewis Strauss in Oppenheimer, it seems that his penchant for precision may be returning.
