In an interview with the cohosts of The View posted Wednesday, Robert Downey Jr. said that not winning his first of three Academy Award nominations for playing Charlie Chaplin in 1992’s Chaplin came as a relief.
“I was young and crazy,” Downey Jr. said by way of explanation. He lost to Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman. Had he won, Downey said, it “would have put me under the impression that I was on the right track.”
He said to Whoopi Goldberg, his costar in the 1991 comedy Soapdish, “Whoopi remembers.”
“We were on those tracks together,” agreed Goldberg.
Following his first Oscar nomination, Downey Jr. underwent “30 years of dependency, depravity and despair,” he said.
Downey also expressed happiness for his nomination for Oppenheimer this year.
“I was just so happy for all 13 nominations,” he said, adding he “couldn’t believe that it was Emily Blunt’s first Oscar nomination.”
Downey Jr. plays U.S. Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss in Christopher Nolan’s Best Picture contender.
The 96th Academy Awards will air live on Sunday, March 10, from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.