PhilipRomano · CC BY-SA 4.0

Nominated for an Oscar at twenty-seven for Chaplin, spent the following decade largely in courtrooms and jail on drug charges, and then executed the most complete comeback in the history of the industry: cast against studio objections as Iron Man in 2008, he anchored a film franchise that took more than twenty billion dollars. Finally won an Academy Award for Oppenheimer in 2024. His father, the underground filmmaker Robert Downey Sr., was Jewish.