Christopher Nolan Was ‘Afraid’ Of ‘Crazy’ Robert Downey Jr.
Robert Downey Jr. revealed earlier this month that he first met his Oppenheimer director, Christopher Nolan, in the early 2000s. RDJ badly wanted to be cast as Scarecrow in Nolan’s 2005 Batman Begins. The role instead went to his Oppenheimer co-star and lead, Cillian Murphy. However, Downey realized when he met Nolan for tea but got the sense the director wasn’t interested in casting him as the film’s villain. In a new joint interview with the Iron Man alum for The New York Times, Nolan fully admitted the exact reason why he passed on him nearly 20 years ago.
Nolan bluntly said to RDJ that he “100% knew” he wasn’t the guy to play Scarecrow. The English filmmaker already had an idea in his head of who he wanted to play the role, but he always wanted to meet Robert. Complimenting the actor, Nolan admitted he was a “huge admirer” of him and took their meeting for selfish reasons. Then, he admitted he was “a little afraid of him” because he heard “all kinds of stories” about how RDJ was crazy. Though those stories about RDJ’s addiction and prison sentence were in the late ’90s, Nolan felt not enough time had passed to shake his thoughts about him.
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In 1996, Downey was arrested for possession of heroin, cocaine, and an unloaded gun. He was given three years of probation. A year later, he was jailed for nearly four months for skipping a court-ordered drug test. Skipping another test in 1999, RDJ was sentenced to three years in prison, serving 15 months. Four months after his release, he was arrested again for drug possession. The actor quit drugs for good in 2003 after his wife Susan gave him an ultimatum.
When asked about how he got over his initial worries about Downey, Nolan said in his NYT joint interview that after he was cast as Tony Stark in Iron Man, “It wound up defining our industry.” Since he finished up with his Marvel character in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, Nolan wanted to offer Downey a role unlike any he’d had before. That is, once he stopped being afraid of him. For his role as Lewis Strauss, he won the Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actor.
