Robert Downey Jr. David Fincher's mystery thriller "Zodiac", which was based on a true story. He played the role of "San Francisco Chronicle" journalist Paul Avery, who was reporting the Zodiac Killer case. With all of the critical success Downey had experienced throughout his career, he had not appeared in a "blockbuster" film. That changed in 2008, when Downey starred in two critically and commercially successful films, "Iron Man" and "Tropic Thunder". In the article Ben Stiller wrote for Downey's entry in the 2008 edition of "The Time 100", he offered an observation on Downey's commercially successful summer at the box office: In
Robert Downey Jr. well. In July 2001, Downey pleaded no contest to the Palm Springs charges, avoiding jail time. Instead, he was sent into drug rehabilitation and received three years of probation, benefiting from the California Proposition 36, which had been passed the year before with the aim of helping nonviolent drug offenders overcome their addictions instead of sending them to jail. The book "Conversations with Woody Allen" reports that director Woody Allen wanted to cast Downey and Winona Ryder in his film "Melinda and Melinda" in 2005, but was unable to do so, because he could not get insurance on them, stating,