Film director Christopher Nolan said he was "a little afraid" of actor Robert Downey Jr. when they first met during casting for "Batman Begins" in the early 2000s.
Earlier this month it emerged that Nolan was considering casting Downey as the villain "Scarecrow" in the Dark Knight franchise. The role went to Cillian Murphy.
Remembering an initial meeting, Downey recalled thinking that Nolan "doesn't seem like he's really in on this interview."
"And he was polite and all that. But you can tell when someone is kind of like, 'It's not going to go anywhere,'" the Iron Man actor said on "The Playlist" podcast, the Independent reported.
Nolan later confirmed to Downey that he knew he was not right for the part.
"I 100 percent knew you weren't the guy [for Scarecrow]," he said in a combined interview with The New York Times. "In my head that was already cast. But I always wanted to meet you. … I was a huge admirer of yours and therefore selfishly just wanted to take the meeting."
Nolan added: "But I was also a little afraid of you, you know. I had heard all kinds of stories about how you were crazy. It was only a few years after the last of those stories that had come out about you."
As the Independent noted, Downey had made previous remarks about living through "30 years of dependency, depravity, and despair" before making his comeback as the star of Marvel's "Iron Man."
Downey, an Oscar nominee, made headlines in the late 1990s and early 2000s when he faced arrest and imprisonment on drug-related charges.
Downey's initial arrest came in 1996, involving the possession of heroin, cocaine, and an unloaded firearm. He has since candidly discussed his battle with drug addiction, ultimately achieving sobriety in July 2003.
Nolan chose Downey to play Admiral Lewis Strauss in his historical epic "Oppenheimer," which led to Downey being nominated for the Best Supporting Actor prize at the Oscars.
"I just really wanted to see this incredible movie star put down all of that baggage, that charisma, and just lose himself in a dramatic portrayal of a very complicated man. I always wanted to work with him, really. Once I stopped being afraid of him," Nolan said.
"You're always looking to work with great actors, but you're also looking to catch them in a moment in their lives and careers where you've got something to offer them that they haven't done before, or haven't done in a long time."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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