Robert Downey Jr. release year for his role in "Tropic Thunder". The first role Downey accepted after "Iron Man" was the title character in Guy Ritchie's "Sherlock Holmes". Warner Bros. released it on December 25, 2009. The film set several box office records in the United States for a Christmas Day release, beating the previous record holder, 2008's "Marley & Me", by nearly $10M, and finished second to "Avatar" in a record-setting Christmas weekend box office. "Sherlock Holmes" ended up being the 8th highest-grossing film of 2009. When Downey won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
Robert Downey Jr. the Brat Pack. In 1987, Downey played Julian Wells, a drug-addicted rich boy whose life rapidly spirals out of his control, in the film version of the Bret Easton Ellis novel "Less Than Zero". His performance, described by Janet Maslin in "The New York Times" as "desperately moving", was widely praised, though Downey has said that for him "the role was like the ghost of Christmas Future" since his drug habit resulted in his becoming an "exaggeration of the character" in real life. "Zero" drove Downey into films with bigger budgets and names, such as "Chances Are" (1989) with Cybill