Robert Downey Jr. justified his status as the world’s highest-paid actor when Captain America: Civil War took $181.8 million at the U.S. box office over the weekend. Downey played Iron Man for the seventh time in the Marvel superhero smackdown blockbuster.
Politics looms large in Civil War: Iron Man has a falling out with Captain America, played by Chris Evans, over U.S. government regulation and the role of the U.N. Downey believes Iron Man, aka Tony Stark, would be backing Hillary Clinton to be the next U.S. President, last week telling The Howard Stern Show: “I believe Tony [Stark], being a budding feminist, would say it’s time to have some feminine energy in the White House.”
Yet with all due respect to the Marvel cinematic universe, Downey’s politics are way more interesting than those of Tony Stark.
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Downey’s multiple Marvel exploits have catapulted him to the top of the Hollywood’s earning tree—Forbes estimated he made $80 million last year alone. His rise is even more remarkable given Downey’s prolonged drug and alcohol abuse in the 1980s and 1990s, which resulted in more than one stint in a California prison and overshadowed his acting career until he got clean in 2001.
Incarceration at the turn of the century seemingly turned Downey, 51, into a conservative. He told the New York Times in 2008: “I have a really interesting point of view, and it’s not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you can’t go from $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal.
“You can’t. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics ever since.”
Downey attended the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minnesota that nominated John McCain, posing for pictures with delegates.
Also in 2008 a GQ feature writer visiting his mansion in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles spotted a picture of Downey and his producer wife Susan Levin with President George W. Bush and his wife Laura taped above the refrigerator. The fact that in interviews, he repeated time-honored conservative sentiments such as the importance of a strong work ethic and individualism added to the impression that he was a Republican.
Left-leaning film blogger Jeffrey Wells wrote in 2011 that an acquaintance of Downey had told him: “His values are pure Republican values. He’s a serious materialist. He loves the great clothes, the beautiful house, the cool cars. He’s a ‘protect the rich’ guy. ”
But in May 2012 Downey appeared to do a political swerve, attending a fundraiser for President Obama at the Los Angeles home of George Clooney. Downey donated $39,580 to President Obama in the run-up to his re-election campaign. And when Mitt Romney was anointed the 2012 Republican presidential nominee at the GOP convention in Tampa, Fla., Downey was nowhere to be seen.
Yet apart from two small donations to the Democratic Parties of Florida and Virginia, Downey made all his other contributions to the Democratic National Committee and President Obama less than a fortnight after the Hollywood fundraiser he attended. He hasn’t given money to any Democrats (or Republicans) since 2012.
Robert Downey, Jr contributed $40000 to Obama re-election campaign. #notaRepublican https://t.co/MJ6M8O4W5o
— Kathy (@mydoggigi) April 23, 2015
A producer, who has developed projects with Downey’s production company Team Downey, told Heat Street he did not defect to the Democrats. Instead his Spiderman actor friend Tobey Maguire, with whom he co-starred in the 2000 film Wonder Boys, encouraged him to attend the Obama fundraiser. “He’s been indebted to Tobey ever since he urged him to accept Iron Man,” the source said.
Asked about his conservatism during an AMA on Reddit in 2014, Downey replied: “Over the last 10 years, the world has changed, and I’m no exception. What I love about America is that your political views are not fixed by nature. It’s natural that I would see the downside of liberalism while housed in an institution as it’s not an uncommon occurrence for people to take advantage of a system that caters to its psychological needs.”
Downey did star in and co-write a little-seen 1993 documentary The Last Party, which whimsically covered the 1992 U.S. election. But friends from that era say during Downey’s self-destructive drink-and-drugs habit, he wasn’t interested in Washington politics, let alone maintaining a party affiliation.
“Robert had no interest whatsoever in politics,” director James Toback, who made three films with Downey between 1987 and 1999, told Heat Street. “When it comes to the U.S. political scene, he may as well have been living in Paraguay.
“I don’t know if he knew who was President. He’s one of the few people from that era that I never had a single conversation with about politics. He was interested in work when he was being fruitful and in drugs when he wasn’t.”
Filmmaker and playwright Ernest Thompson directed Downey, Kiefer Sutherland and Winona Ryder in anti-Vietnam War drama 1969. “I’m not sure what his clarity was during filming,” Thompson tells Heat Street, “but he had no problem with the antiwar message and bought right into the theme of the film. But money can change a person’s liberal or conservative views.”
One source reports seeing Downey at an auction for eastern medicine a few years ago. The star got into a bidding war with a lady over a sculpture. Bidding reached $50,000 and Downey shouted out, ‘Do you know how much money I made in the last few years?’ Yet Downey then bought the sculpture and gave it to the lady.
Many think Downey was ironically making more interesting films when he was battling personal demons. “He’s a hell of an actor but there’s stuff he’s not showing,” says Ernest Thompson who still hopes to persuade him to act in a new play Some Parts Missing. “But he’s so admired by young people, he might not want to mess with what audiences like.”
Downey doesn’t like to discuss politics “one million percent,” he told The Howard Stern Show.
When I asked him about the intervention message in Captain America: Civil War last year, he answered: “In my family, I have relatives who are married into Syrian families that are involved in conflict there, so it’s harder for me to be impartial.”
Evidently reprising his role as Tony Stark in the long-rumored Iron Man 4 is preferable to Downey than incurring the wrath of liberal Hollywood for his rightward views and risking the opprobrium of many of his 6.6 million Twitter followers.
Last year, he walked off an interview with Channel 4 News when he was asked about his politics and personal history, but not before he had said, “Actually I wouldn’t say I’m a Republican or a Liberal or a Democrat…you can have opinions and they can change and flow.”
Whether he is backing Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, Downey says the most important thing for him in the upcoming election is that he gets to exercise his democratic right again. He was pardoned by Gov. Jerry Brown on Christmas Eve last year for a 1996 drug conviction and had his voting rights restored.
“I’m going to vote,” Downey told Howard Stern. “That’s what’s important.”
Had the honor of being one of a number inducted into the CA Hall of Fame yesterday by Gov Brown. #CAProud pic.twitter.com/YHMlSwSRMh
— Robert Downey Jr (@RobertDowneyJr) October 29, 2015