He is the kind of guy whom all girls love and hate at the same time. But that is a tag and a personality that the drop-dead gorgeous Robert Downey Jr., wears almost like second skin. From being a child actor in his father’s films, this talented actor has blossomed into one of the most bankable actors in Hollywood.

The Iron Man series though, Downey admits, is special simply because “there is a lot of Robert Downey in the character of Tony Stark.” The home video of the latest offering of the franchise, Iron Man 3, has just been launched and Downey opens up about playing it thrice in a row, his chemistry with Pepper Potts and the emotional ups and downs of essaying Iron Man.

Shooting for Iron Man 3
We had a lot of night shoots on this movie, and there were points where everything was coming together all at once and it’s four in the morning and there are 25 plot points and six characters and you just go, “Wow.” And the best remedy for complication is just a good time. So this has been, I think probably since the first Iron Man — as stressful as it was and as much hope and as much excitement as we had in the unproven entity—a real return to a sense of just fun and goodwill.

A different approach to the film
I am five years older (since the first Iron Man film), so back in the day, all I cared about was have I taken enough creatine, do my arms look big, how’s the light, and then am I kind of charming and funny. And this time around the relationship with Pepper is obviously the kind of centre of the movie. Contrary to my own designs, it seems like this time, I’m much less thinking about ‘how do I come off’ and this and that. I am thinking about the other characters. I’m thinking about this kind of a checklist of stuff that we always thought maybe we should do. One of them was we always felt like Tony and Rhodey should be at Neptune’s Net because it is up the road from where Tony lives and it’s a biker bar. Jon [Favreau] (the director) and I, and then Shane [Black] and I and even Joss [Whedon] have all contributed to this kind of Christmas list that we never got to execute because story or time or money or whatever got in the way. And it seems like, without it being convoluted, a lot of those wishes came true in Iron Man 3.

Keeping the chemistry fresh
I start thinking in terms of what’s in it for my co-stars, and what is it that keeps this interesting for Gwyneth (who plays Pepper Potts). We have addressed that because she has a pretty remarkable arc for a love-interest, female heroine in this film. So that’s probably one of the things that I was most excited about. She has a pretty incredible arc this time. Rebecca Hall, who plays Dr Maya Hansen, has just become one of my favourite people in the world. The relationship between Tony and a girl from the past that he just shared a night with is also really cool to motivate some changes and drama for him and Pepper. But it’s also nice because we always saw Tony as a playboy but we never thought that there was someone he actually maybe would have spent a little more time with. It’s interesting that there is this history between them that comes into play in the story and the theme. Rebecca has done a great job.