Why ‘Saturday Night Live’ was the defining role of Robert Downey Jr’s career
History was made at the Academy Awards when Robert Downey Jr was named ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for his performance in Oppenheimer, which made him the first current or former Saturday Night Live cast member to have ever won an Oscar for acting.
It’s a curious slice of history, and not just because the long-running sketch comedy has gifted the industry with so many stars. Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Bill Murray, Kristen Wiig, Tina Fey, Mike Myers, and Eddie Murphy are just some of the names to have cut their teeth on SNL before going on to much bigger things, but what makes Downey Jr stand out is that he was terrible.
Although it’s not a pre-requisite, the actor didn’t have any stand-up, improv, or traditional comedy experience whatsoever when he was hired for the gig. He debuted the same year he scored his first major mainstream movie hit in Weird Science, but only lasted one season and 16 episodes before being given the boot when the show’s experiment of drafting in a younger, fresher-faced, and untested repertory backfired.
It was clear among viewers that Downey Jr wasn’t cut out for sketch comedy, and it became readily apparent to the man himself, too. It was a noble attempt at getting his foot in the Hollywood door that didn’t turn out as planned, but in hindsight, it wouldn’t be unfair to suggest his ill-fated and widely-derided stint on SNL was the most important role of his career.
Having accepted beyond any doubt that he was never going to follow the trail blazed by Murray, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and Chevy Chase in jumping from Lorne Michaels’ hit series into a lucrative career in feature-length comedy capers, Downey was forced to start from the bottom all over again and carve out his own niche.
It may have taken him a while as he bounced from genre to genre without gaining widespread recognition for his work, but six years after he’d been fired from SNL, he was an Oscar-nominated performer after Richard Attenborough’s Chaplin saw him shortlisted in the ‘Best Actor’ category.
By that point, it was well-known the second-generation actor had comedic chops, so long as they played into his whip-smart, sardonic wheelhouse. That’s not something the improvisation and impersonation-heavy formula of SNL can provide, but he did alright for himself on the big screen nonetheless. Still, it wasn’t until Chaplin that he outlined his dramatic chops, something else comedy couldn’t provide.
Many of his performances – including Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man, Tropic Thunder, and Due Date – have displayed that he can be a very funny actor, but it’s not a coincidence all of those roles play to his strengths. SNL underlined how trying to be something he wasn’t and couldn’t hope to be was the wrong port of call, but in the long run, it turned out to be the wrong career decision that ended up being made for the right reasons.
If he had been a success, then he would have ended up stuffing himself into the SNL-shaped box that so many talents have mastered over the decades. It was never one he was going to fit into, though, and that early failure saw him reappraise what he wanted to be, how he wanted to get there, and the way he set out to achieve it. Sure, there were notable speedbumps along the way, but he got there eventually.
