Iron Man Robert Downey Jr Addresses His Past

Robert Downey Jr., who plays the title character in Jon Favreau's upcoming Iron Man movie, told SCI FI Wire that he's aware that his personal history resonates with that of his character, millionaire playboy Tony Stark, who has his own history of substance abuse.
The tabloid-fodder Oscar nominee--who is perhaps better known for his prison sentence (on drug- and alcohol-related charges) and rehab stints than for his critically acclaimed performances in such films as Chaplin and The Singing Detective--addressed the issue in a question from SCI FI Wire on the film's Playa Vista, Calif., set last June.
Downey, who successfully completed rehab in 2002 and by all accounts has been clean and sober since, is ready for the inevitable question.
"I think when someone has had a fundamental change, and they're not just trying to backpedal and make it seem like 'I'm going to rehab again, everything's fine,' whatever, ... my thing is, what else is attractive [to me about the role] is, yeah, Tony Stark, he's been known to go bonkers and be so irresponsible that he's, like, too hammered to put on his shoes," Downey says in his typical elliptical way. "And [when they approached me,] I was like, 'Really?' And they were like, 'Yeah, really.'"
Even so, Downey downplays the significance of his personal history to the casting and the character. "There's so much stuff in this movie as it is that we decided not to do, like, the Pirandello thing," he says, referring to the Italian dramatist and his play, Six Characters in Search of an Author, in which the lines between actors and their characters are blurred. "But I get it. In a way, that's why it's, like, ideally suited for me, and I'm ideally suited for it."
In a well-known 1979 Iron Man comic arc, "Demon in a Bottle," Stark struggles with alcoholism, a first for a major superhero character.
That particular aspect of Stark's character won't come up in the first Iron Man movie, but will be addressed in any sequels, director Favreau says. He acknowledges the similarities between Stark and Downey's own personal histories, but added that the casting allowed him to go to new places.
"When we cast Robert--when he was approved and we got him to be in the movie and Marvel gave it the OK--it completely freed me," Favreau said. "Because I knew I was halfway there to having a movie that I could be proud of. ... I can't think of anybody better than him. He brings a reality, a humor, a panache, ... a life of experience. ... There's a lot of Tony Stark in him, and that's so much better than trying to teach somebody to pretend that they are funny or pretend that they are smart or pretend that they are talented." Iron Man opens May 2.