The actor who won an Oscar for Oppenheimer is well known for his turbulent past, marked by excesses in terms of alcohol and drugs. Yet, few remember this daring accident that could have cost him his life
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| The absurd story of how Robert Downey Jr. almost died for a series about… Mussolini! |
Robert Downey Jr.'s past in the early phase of his career is no mystery. The actor himself – today among the most famous and beloved in the world, thanks to his performances as Tony Stark / Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and therefore the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer – has chosen to speak openly about his problems with alcohol and drug addiction and clarify in first person a whole series of anecdotes, rumors and urban legends that have grown and circulated in Hollywood over the years regarding his uncontrollable excesses,
including those that have cost him various firings from the set (see his sudden disappearance from the cast and the plot of the cult series Ally McBeal, concretized with a specious and unlikely plot twist that fans still struggle to forgive today). But among these anecdotes related to the terrible boy Robert Downey Jr., there is also one that very few remember, and it is linked to none other than the figure of Benito Mussolini. In the actor's filmography, in fact, there is a title that is now practically unknown: Mussolini - The Untold Story, a 1985 television series of American production, inspired by the memoir written by the son of the Italian dictator, Vittorio Mussolini.
In a curious post-modern short circuit, the biographical mini-series was filmed in the then Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, now orphaned by its Josip Broz (known as Tito) who died in 1980; a country by then highly unstable and tragically ever closer to the so-called Balkan Wars (or Yugoslavian Wars). Unreleased in Italy, the series Mussolini - The Untold Story was instead broadcast in the USA by NBC, registering decidedly different critical reactions, without excluding strong controversy.
In fact, for a part of the press, the work, focusing on aspects of Mussolini's private life, ended up proposing an excessively positive or perhaps even celebratory image of the dictator, thanks to the excellent interpretation by the charismatic protagonist George C. Scott. And in 1989, in an interview that became very famous in America for its heated, decidedly explicit tones - which also earned Robert Downey Jr. the coveted cover of the magazine Interview, founded by Andy Warhol - the actor himself made public the incredible accident that occurred on the set of the mini-series, where he played one of the youngest sons, Bruno Mussolini.
Without ever directly naming the director of the incriminating sequence, William A. Graham, Robert Downey Jr. then recounted a few years later the filming and the details of this dangerous accident, which could have caused him serious injuries and probably even death: «We were in Yugoslavia, a horrible thing. When I think of all the fucking wonderful movies that the guy who was in Patton [he’s talking about the protagonist George C. Scott] has been in, I can’t imagine what it’s like to end up in a shitty place like that. We were all miserable there. I’m not saying George liked me, but at least he liked me. We had to shoot a scene together, the crew in Yugoslavia was very small. We had to do a close-up of him. The director was standing there with his fishing magazine.
Nice director, but he preferred fishing. While he was shooting the close-up I had to run towards these helicopters. Some people are mesmerized by their rotating blades. And so as I kept running I almost ran straight into the fucking propeller. I send a Christmas card to Gabriel Byrne every year, he saved my life. He grabbed me and threw me away from that thing. So I was on the ground and I was screaming, “Jesus! Do you understand that it makes perfect sense to me to keep running? The sign you put in the tests in my opinion is beyond the propeller”. But at that point, George replied: “Stop! You stupid idiot, you always have to look where you’re going! What the fuck are you doing?” He basically got angry because I was about to die in front of his eyes while he was shooting his precious close-up. But let’s say that in general, it seemed to me that everyone was worried about that. But no, of course, it was always me who was trying to attract attention”.
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