Interview with RDJ
I Am Iron Man: Robert Downey Jr
CBR: Would you agree that Iron Man, a classic superhero, is an unusual role for you?
RDJ: Well, I mean, all my friends are doing it. And I remember the original 'Superman' and Marlon Brando was in it. I thought, 'Wow, these things must be getting legit.' And I was already I guess fairly opinionated when I was 7. I'm kind of like a nerd about this stuff, and I think there�s been this onslaught of this genre of film, but I thought this one was different enough to accommodate whatever snobbery might be unleashed on me by my peers, friends. Or just my buddies. You want to do stuff, and they say, 'You're doing what now? 'Shaggy Dog?�' No one's given me any guff about 'Iron Man,' and it's funny, too; a particular kind of fan likes it: really smart, highly-educated entertainment lawyers pulling me aside at a party, saying, 'I didn�t really want to say this, but, dude, Tony Stark, and the Mandarin, and�' And the tie gets loose and they start just geeking out and it's great.
Contains this lulzy gem:
And he said they got more female fanmail than for all of their other heroes combined because there was this sense of [Iron Man] being very vulnerable and not knowing from day to day whether this very precarious device that keeps him alive and drives him but is clearly a metaphor for something else, but sometimes it's not a metaphor, you know?
Tony Stark fangirls totally aren't into that kind of thing, right? Ha ha ha... ha... ha. Oy. *g* I love when creators understand their audience.