ROBERT DOWNEY JR., GWYNETH PALTROW, TERRENCE HOWARD AND JON FAVREAU CHAT ABOUT “IRON MAN”

Robert Downey Jr. downplayed being called a genius actor by his peers: “I always thought genius meant someone who had a lot of character and everybody has a lot of character so I don’t know, I don’t want to be too humble. It’s not that hard to be good, you just have to do it a lot. It’s kinda like asking the 43-year-old guy who’s spinning a basketball on his finger, ‘How do you do that so good?’ It’s like, I’ve been doing it forever, so it’s easy.”

Downey Jr. said martial arts training helped him prepare physically for the title role: “I just did a ton of strength training and I’m a big kung-fu head, I’m a martial arts student so that helped. But it’s not like I was pumping up on set, because I literally, I may have a bit of an ego sometimes, but I just couldn’t be like ‘Everybody hold on while I get swoll status.’”

Downey also talked about working with director Jon Favreau and actress Gwyneth Paltrow: “Favreau is the reason the movie works. And we had good writers and then we improvised quite a bit, but we already had a good story line and ya know, my love interest kind of is Gwyneth Paltrow, which is no stretch.”

Paltrow returned the compliment to Downey: “Well, as a guy he has become one of my all time favorite people and as an actor, I was just amazed at every day how spontaneous he was.”

Terrence Howard had kudos for Downey as well: “I loved working with Robert Downey for the simple fact that here is a completely transparent man. No misgivings about what you think about him, or somebody else thinks about him, because all his demons are right there for everyone to look at and he’s accepted it and now he’s free as an actor and the greatest actor I’ve ever worked with.”

Director Jon Favreau talked about fighting for Robert for the title role in the film, even when others weren’t sure he was right: “I just really wanted Robert for the role and he just really wanted to do it and he was not the obvious choice and not who the studio wanted me to hire. I think they wanted someone a little more boring, a little younger. Robert brings a charm to this guy who is otherwise so flawed, in many ways, and it really gave us permission to play this guy in a way that I don’t think I could have with any other actor.”

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