Sam Rockwell Paid Tribute To Oscar Winner Robert Downey Jr. With An Amazing Tropic Thunder Reference
"There are actors, and then there are actors who don't drop characters until the DVD commentary."
This is how 2017 Best Supporting Actor Oscar-winner Sam Rockwell opened his impassioned speech in honor of Best Supporting Actor nominee, Robert Downey Jr. The man who gave us a decade of playing Tony Stark in Marvel's "Iron Man" films would go on to take home the statue (a well-deserved honor, I might add), his first win after previous nominations for "Chaplin" and his controversial performance in "Tropic Thunder." The former is a role that plenty of film pundits have claimed should have brought RDJ his first Oscar all the way back in 1992, while the latter nomination is still heavily debated considering RDJ's character was an actor who underwent a dangerous and racist procedure to darken his skin in order to play a Black character.
The joke was that his character Kirk Lazarus was the type of actor to dedicate himself to a role in a manner that is unhealthy, but that he had been hailed as one of Hollywood's finest. Whether or not this is an "acceptable" performance for a white actor to play even if it's satirical is not my place to decide as a white person, During a pivotal moment, Lazarus exclaims, "I'm a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude," a phenomenal line delivery as RDJ himself was a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude. Rockwell's introduction was the perfect way to acknowledge RDJ's prior nomination without making a tasteless joke about the film's controversy, instead drawing a parallel to RDJ's consistent commitment to whatever role comes his way.
He doesn't read the script, the script reads him
As /Film's Bill Bria wrote in his piece hailing Robert Downey Jr.'s win as the precise right moment for the prolific performer, "Consider the fact that he acted as unofficial brand ambassador for Marvel for years, sending the signal to audiences and industry people alike that superhero movies could both be fun and be taken seriously. Consider also that, after the heroic demise of the character in 'Avengers: Endgame,' the MCU has struggled mightily to fill the void the actor has left behind, and still hasn't been able to." Earlier in the night, before the awards were given out, Jimmy Kimmel lovingly poked fun at RDJ's troubled past, and the actor played right back by gesturing at his nose – a signal of his history with drug addiction. This is to say, RDJ was willing to acknowledge the infamous moments of his life with the same embrace as his most well-loved. This is why hearing Sam Rockwell, another actor with a less-than-perfect past, lovingly paying tribute to one of Downey Jr.'s most controversial roles was fitting.
The fake Kirk Lazarus may have five Academy Award statues at home, but the real Robert Downey Jr. now has one of his own, too.