Finally, just months after making his momentous debut as Tony Stark in Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr. appeared alongside Ben Stiller and Jack Black in the 2008 comedy blockbuster Tropic Thunder. It’s arguable that this is the most ambitious role of Downey’s career, perhaps one of the most of any star in recent memory. This isn’t a matter of it being some kind of high-minded virtuous expression of a character necessarily, but rather that just comedically it was risky in terms of taste, requiring Downey to tow several lines of irony and satire, and also performatively, requiring him to embody two or three very different personas, sometimes mere moments apart.
It’s best summed up by the much-quoted line, that he was the dude playing the dude disguised as another dude. So he’s Kirk Lazarus, self-serious Australian method actor, who has donned a technologically advanced version of blackface to become Vietnam War sergeant Lincoln Osiris. He captures the extent to which a clueless white actor may flail in the waters of stereotyping and grasping for any pop culture knowledge of black culture available to him, and the hilarious idea of this crazy actor having no self-awareness about how offensive his performance is. Of course, Downey and Stiller were aware of the offensiveness, which makes it funny for us.
Do you have any favorite Robert Downey Jr. performances to highlight from the course of his illustrious career? Share them in the comments section below.