HOLLYWOOD: Robert Downey Jr on Sunday won his first Academy Award, a best supporting actor statuette for his villainous turn in “Oppenheimer” — a golden moment in a decades-long career of highs and lows, on and off the screen.The Oscar triumph for the 58-year-old American capped a glittering awards season, during which he snared a slew of prizes for his portrayal of Lewis Strauss, the jealous rival who orchestrated the blacklisting of the father of the atomic bomb.”I’d like to thank my terrible childhood and the Academy — in that order,” Downey joked in his acceptance speech before turning serious and thanking director Christopher Nolan and his producer wife Emma Thomas.”Here’s my little secret. I needed this job more than it needed me. Chris knew it. Emma made sure that she surrounded me with one of the great casts and crews of all time… It was fantastic. And I stand here before you a better man because of it.”Downey bested a stacked field that included two-time Oscar winner Robert De Niro (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), fan favorite Ryan Gosling (“Barbie”), Mark Ruffalo (“Poor Things”) and Sterling K. Brown (“American Fiction”).The win came 31 years after Downey’s first nomination, for his leading role in Richard Attenborough’s Hollywood biopic “Chaplin,” and 15 years after his second for a divisive turn in comedy “Tropic Thunder.”In a career defined by playing heroes (he is Iron Man, after all) and seductive leading men, Downey earned the industry’s top honor by going against type.As the film opens, Downey’s Strauss — who served with J. Robert Oppenheimer on the US Atomic Energy Commission that controlled the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos — seems like just another bureaucrat.But as the plot unfolds, he engineers a post-Hiroshima campaign to discredit Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), working behind the scenes to undermine him at every turn, especially by questioning his patriotism.Little by little, Downey unveils his bitter arrogance, until his machinations are revealed at a Senate hearing he hopes would confirm his nomination as Dwight Eisenhower’s secretary of commerce. Instead, his cabinet bid is left in tatters.Nolan’s taut epic came into Sunday night with 13 nominations, the most of any film.
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