Robert Downey Jr. Bluntly Turns Down His Own ‘Avengers’ Oscars Campaign: ‘Let’s Not’ – IndieWire

Disney launched its 2019 For Your Consideration website at the start of October and confirmed it would be campaigning its record-breaking “Avengers: Endgame” in Oscar categories such as Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Visual Effects, Best Costume Design, and more. The “Endgame” FYC page upset thousands of Marvel movie fans for not featuring an acting bid for Robert Downey Jr., but it turns out the actor has no interest in an awards campaign for his final outing as Tony Stark/Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Downey Jr. appeared on the October 7 edition of Howard Stern’s Sirius XM talk show, where the radio host expressed frustration with Oscar voters for not taking a superhero movie role like Downey Jr.’s seriously. “Because it’s a superhero movie they turn [up] their nose at it,” Stern said. “The performance is excellent. It’s a totally believable character.”

“I’m so glad you brought this up because there was some talk about [an Oscar campaign],” Downey Jr. added, “And I said, ‘Let’s not.’”

Whether or not Downey Jr. removed himself from the running or not remains to be seen, but it’s clear the actor has no interest in an Oscar campaign. Downey Jr.’s reveal will come as sad news to his “Iron Man” director and Marvel co-star Jon Favreau, who has been advocating for a Downey Jr. Oscar nomination since the release of “Avengers: Endgame” in April.

“He has my vote for sure,” Favreau told Variety. “I think he was able to discover and explore dimensions of the character over the course of many, many films, which is a bit of its own category. But I have to say that if you look at, especially how it began and how it ended in his performances between the first one and ‘Endgame,’ there was a really thoughtful arc to the character, both in his performance and how all the filmmakers contributed to that character.”

While superhero movies broke through in a big way at the Oscars earlier this year with “Black Panther,” they still have struggled when it comes to acting nominations. Michael B. Jordan’s performance in “Black Panther” had strong Oscar buzz for awhile but it did not result in a nomination. In a year where Joaquin Phoenix’s “Joker” performance is battling it out for a Best Actor nomination, would voters also go for Downey Jr.? Are the Oscars accepting enough for two comic book performances to make the cut? The only answer we know for sure is that Downey Jr. simply doesn’t care.

Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)