The Marvel Cinematic Universe boasts some of the greatest actors working in modern Hollywood. For many of them, however, their work outside the confines of the MCU are just as superheroic.
Since 2008, the Marvel Studios machine has made careers and revived others while some seem to disappear in the roles entirely. When Robert Downey Jr. was cast to lead Iron Man in 2008, it was deemed by the press a risky decision given RDJ's very public stints in rehab and one-year prison sentence. But after Iron Man took off as a multi-million dollar blockbuster, gone was RDJ's radioactive aura. He was a movie star again, and it was only the beginning of Marvel's reputation to turn Hollywood's overlooked scraps into genuine heroes.
