But as I got to know more about this gent, Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, one column led to another, and then to a book called The Soloist, and then to a movie in which Robert Downey Jr. plays yours truly.
Downey and I spent some time together in 2007 and then again earlier this year, when the movie was in production, but I never felt that he needed a great deal from me. He seemed to be looking for a little piece of my personality or my psyche, but as a creative force of nature he was in the process of constructing a character who was true to me and yet wholly original. Thanks for that. The guy he came up with is cooler than the real Steve Lopez.
Recently, Downey, who's in London working on a new film, and I had an e-mail conversation about his approach on this and other movies.
Anybody who goes from Iron Man to Tropic Thunder to The Soloist and now to Sherlock Holmes obviously has great range. But is it a coincidence that you've often played a journalist (Zodiac, Natural Born Killers, Good Night, and Good Luck), or is there something about the profession that appeals to your artistic curiosity and made you want to play a columnist in The Soloist?
Actors and journalists are similar in that they both essentially provide a service. The ones I've gotten to know a bit, and come to admire over the last 25 years, seem to have a genuine drive to simultaneously tell a story and observe life on life's terms. That gives you a lot to chew on -- and also makes them pretty fun to hang out with when you are researching.
You asked if you could look through my closet before filming started, so you could have some piece of me to work with. How do you go about constructing an original character based on a real person?
Well, for Chaplin, the more I attempted to re-create the man, the more frustrating it became, so it was basically nine months of detective work just to get up to speed. At the end, the character I portrayed was still miles away from the icon we adore but close enough to the truth, I guess. Playing [Paul] Avery in Zodiac was much more specific in that he represented a dying breed of sorts, whereas in “The Soloist," [director] Joe Wright and I used you as a conduit for the ideas of faith, friendship and honor, so it was much more introspective. I still wanna look through your closet anyway.
