Robert Downey Jr. says he’s not fazed by Jimmy Kimmel’s controversial Oscars joke about him.
“I don’t care,” he instructed Esquire in an interview revealed Monday. “I like Jimmy Kimmel. I believe he’s a nationwide treasure.”
The actor, who gained an Oscar for his supporting function in Oppenheimer, was the butt of a string of jokes from Kimmel in the course of the comic’s opening monologue at this yr’s Academy Awards.
“That is the very best level of Robert Downey Jr.’s lengthy and illustrious profession —properly, one of many highest factors,” Kimmel cracked, seemingly in reference to Downey’s historical past of drug habit.
Within the viewers, Downey tapped his nostril in response.
“Was that too on the nostril, or is {that a} drug movement you made?” Kimmel added.
Downey had a years-long battle with habit earlier than he obtained sober in 2003.
The joke didn’t sit proper with some viewers who steered the Iron Man star appeared uncomfortable in the course of the trade.
In his acceptance speech later that night time, the actor thanked his spouse, producer Susan Downey, telling her, “You really liked me again to life.” They met in 2003 and have been married since 2005.
“Everyone loves the easy narrative of someway I got here in and turned his life round and blah, blah, blah,” Susan Downey instructed Esquire.
“However I can inform you that I’d by no means be who I’m with out him in my life. His trajectory is simply the better one to chart as a result of he’s needed to stay his ups and downs in public.”