Robert Downey Jr. Reveals The “Two Most Important” Movies Of His Career

Best known for his turn as Tony Stark in Marvel’s Iron Man, and many other big screen credits including Sherlock Holmes and the forthcoming thriller Oppenheimer, Robert Downey Jr. is recognized as a Hollywood heavyweight. However, the “two most important” movie roles of the actor’s decades-long career are perhaps not what fans would expect.

Speaking to the New York Times, Downey Jr. disclosed that the two films in question are the 2006 family comedy The Shaggy Dog and the 2020 adventure flick Dolittle. “Honestly, the two most important films I've done in the last 25 years are The Shaggy Dog, because that was the film that got Disney saying they would insure me,” the actor shared. “Then the second most important film was Dolittle, because Dolittle was a two-and-a-half-year wound of squandered opportunity.”

The MCU star went on to explain that Dolittle — which was deemed a commercial and critical failure — is an important part of his filmography because it changed his approach to selecting future movie roles. “We had this reset of priorities and made some changes in who our closest business advisers were,” he added.

As mentioned, Dolittle, which tells the story of a Welsh veterinarian with the ability to communicate with animals, failed to meet expectations among critics and at the box office. The film, which also stars Antonio Banderas, Michael Sheen, and Emma Thompson, currently holds a 14% critics' approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and earned $77 million at the domestic box office, falling short of its overall budget.

In his New York Times profile, Downey Jr. also recalled signing up for the role of Dr. John Dolittle, revealing that he got “a little too excited” about joining another major franchise following his stint in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“I finished the Marvel contract and then hastily went into what had all the promise of being another big, fun, well-executed potential franchise in Dolittle,” the actor explained in the July interview. “I had some reservations. Me and my team seemed a little too excited about the deal and not quite excited enough about the merits of the execution. But at that point I was bulletproof. I was the guru of all genre movies.”