Robert Downey Jr had a less than enthusiastic reaction when asked his thoughts about billionaire Elon Musk being compared to his Iron Man character, Tony Stark.
During an appearance on New York Magazine’s On With Kara Swisher podcast, the 59-year-old Oscar winner expressed his mixed feelings about the Tesla CEO “cosplaying” as his famed Avengers role.
“I’ve only met him a few times, I just wish that he would control his behavior a little more,” Downey Jr said of Musk.
In the Marvel film franchise, based on the Marvel Comics, Downey Jr portrays billionaire businessman Stark, as well as his alter-ego Iron Man. In fact, this is not the first time the comparison has been made between Downey Jr’s fictional character and the real-life SpaceX founder.
Back in 2016, Iron Man director Jon Favreau revealed that Musk had influenced certain elements of Stark’s on-screen portrayal. Speaking on the Recode Decode podcast at the time, Favreau said that Downey Jr spent time with the entrepreneur to “give us some insight into what it’d really be like to be Tony Stark.”
The director also revealed they filmed some scenes for Iron Man 2 at SpaceX, and that he “maintained a friendship” with Musk after the movie. Musk even makes a brief cameo in the second Iron Man installment.
However, it seems that Downey Jr’s relationship with Musk has changed since then. Elsewhere during the podcast, the Oppenheimer star shared his thoughts on the tech giant’s efforts to colonize Mars, adding: “This idea of, ‘It’s all okay because we’ve gotta get to Mars,’ doesn’t really hold water with me.”
Musk has continued to spark backlash in recent years, most notably after his $44 billion purchase of Twitter, which he renamed X. The father of 12 has been accused of using his app to spread misinformation regarding Covid-19 vaccinations, and hawking right-wing conspiracy theories in favor of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Musk publicly shared his support for the former US president when he spoke during a rally in Pennsylvania this month ahead of the upcoming November election.
Despite his recent controversies, Downey Jr didn’t entirely dismiss Musk’s contributions to the tech industry. “You have to look at all that [Musk has] done that demonstrates why he’s valuable,” the Sherlock Holmes actor said.
“Nowadays separating the individual from their behavior is a tough thing to do because hell is other people – and that has been hijacked in this information age, to divide us rather than allow for discourse, debate, and dialogue.”
Downey Jr concluded his role as Iron Man in the 2019 Marvel film, Avengers: Endgame. He’s set to return to the franchise as supervillain Doctor Doom in Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars.
