Robert Downey Jr. is grateful he didn’t win an Oscar for Chaplin

Robert Downey Jr. is fresh off an Academy Award nomination for his exemplary work on Oppenheimer, but the actor received his first Oscar nomination over thirty years ago for Chaplin. He wound up losing to Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman, and while the loss may have stung at the time, Downey Jr. is now grateful he didn’t win.

During an interview with the hosts of The View, Robert Downey Jr. explained why he’s glad he didn’t win the Best Actor Oscar for Chaplin. “I was young and crazy,” Downey Jr. said, adding that winning at 28 years old “would have put me under the impression I was on the right track.” The actor famously spent many years getting in trouble with the law, with multiple arrests for drug charges. Following parole violations after being arrested in 1996 for the possession of heroin and cocaine, as well as firing a handgun while speeding down Sunset Boulevard, Downey Jr. was sentenced to three years in prison. He would serve 15 months but was arrested yet again for drug possession just four months later.

After several more years of substance abuse, arrests, rehab, and relapse, Downey Jr. started to get his career back on track with starring roles in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Zodiac, but he hit blockbuster status after being cast as Tony Stark/Iron Man. It’s easy to forget that many executives resisted casting Downey Jr. in the role due to his history, but former Marvel Studios president David Maisel went to bat for him. “My board thought I was crazy to put the future of the company in the hands of an addict,” Maisel told Variety last year. “I helped them understand how great he was for the role. We all had confidence that he was clean and would stay clean.“

Robert Downey Jr. received another Oscar nomination for Tropic Thunder in 2008 but lost to Health Ledger for The Dark Knight. This could be his year, but he faces some stiff competition with Sterling K. Brown (American Fiction), Robert De Niro (Killers of the Flower Moon), Ryan Gosling (Barbie), and Mark Ruffalo (Poor Things) also up for the award.