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 Sr. Robert Downey Sr. Robert John Downey Sr. (born Robert Elias Jr.; June 24, 1935) is a retired American actor, director, producer, writer and cinematographer, and the father of actor Robert Downey Jr. He is best known for writing and directing the underground film "Putney Swope", a satire on the New York Madison Avenue advertising world. According to film scholar Wheeler Winston Dixon, the elder Downey's films during the 1960s were "strictly take-no-prisoners affairs, with minimal budgets and outrageous satire, effectively pushing forward the countercultural agenda of the day". Robert John Downey Sr. was born on June 24, 1935 in New