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Robert Downey Jr. took home the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor on Sunday —marking his first-ever Oscar win. But the Oppenheimer star couldn’t accept his award on Hollywood’s biggest night without making a round of thanks and, of course, a few signature jokes.
“I’d like to thank my terrible childhood and the Academy, in that order,” Downey joked onstage, after accepting the award from past winners Sam Rockwell and Ke Huy Quan.
The actor played J. Robert Oppenheimer’s professional nemesis Lewis Strauss, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission who directs most of his professional and personal energy into ruining Oppenheimer’s reputation and career, in the Christopher Nolan biopic. Downey has been hailed throughout the award season for his performance. (Rolling Stone film critic David Fear called it “some of the best work of [Downey’s] long career.”) He has been nominated for two previous Academy Awards for his work in the 1993 film Chaplin and 2009’s Tropic Thunder.
Downey also thanked his publicist (a running trend during the show), his stylist, and his wife Susan Downey, who he humorously referred to as his veterinarian. “She found me a snarling rescue pet, and loved me back to life,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.”
It’s a striking win for the veteran actor and especially triumphant given the jokes Oscar host Jimmy Kimmel leveled at him in the night’s opening monologue, targeting Downey’s past history with extreme substance abuse — which threatened to end his career as an actor.
“I needed this job more than it needed me,” Downey said, clutching his statuette. “I stand here before you a better man because of it.”
