Robert Downey Jr says his mum gave him a little bit of a warning earlier than Tropic Thunder hit the cinemas.
The Iron Man actor, who turns 59 on Friday (4 April), famously starred as Kirk Lazarus within the 2008 movie.
Within the movie, Lazarus is a white Australian methodology actor who undergoes ‘pigmentation alteration’ to play a black character, which sees Downey Jr’s carry out in blackface.
Amid the controversy, director Ben Stiller defined that the intent was to satirise actors who go to excessive lengths for awards.
He went so far as to say he doesn’t remorse utilizing the character within the movie, and refuses to apologise.
Now, in a 2020 episode of The Joe Rogan Expertise, Downey Jr admitted that his mum was ‘horrified’ after discovering out what his position was in Tropic Thunder.
He claims she instructed him: “Bobby, I’m telling ya, I’ve a foul feeling about this.”
Downey Jr admitted that he had some doubts in regards to the half too, however then realised: “I get to carry as much as nature the insane self-involved hypocrisy of artists and what they suppose they’re allowed to do every so often.
“[Ben Stiller] knew precisely what the imaginative and prescient for this was, he executed it, it was not possible to not have or not it’s an offensive nightmare of a film.
“And 90 % of my black pals have been like, ‘Dude, that was nice.’ I can’t disagree with [the other 10 percent].”
He went on to say he ‘is aware of the place his coronary heart lies’, nonetheless, he added that it is ‘by no means an excuse to do one thing that’s misplaced and out of its time, however to me it blasted the cap on [the issue]’.
“I feel having an ethical psychology is job one. Generally, you simply gotta go, ‘Yeah I effed up.’ In my defence, Tropic Thunder is about how incorrect [blackface] is, so I take exception.”
Regardless of all of the noise across the position, Downey Jr was nominated for Greatest Supporting Actor on the Oscars for his position.
Then in 2024, Robert Downey Jr went that one step additional and received the Academy Award for greatest supporting actor in Oppenheimer.
Whereas selling the film that yr, he in contrast Tropic Thunder to Norman Lear’s sitcom All within the Household, while noting a disclaimer firstly of the present.
In 2024, he told Selection: “There was an understanding with an viewers, and I’m not saying that the viewers is not understanding — I’m saying that issues have gotten very muddied.
“The spirit that [Ben] Stiller directed and forged and shot Tropic Thunder in was, basically, as a railing towards all of those tropes that aren’t proper and [that] had been perpetuated for too lengthy.”
