Robert Downey Jr enjoys a challenge.

The 43-year-old actor has overcome plenty, whether it was his battle with drugs in the 1990s and early 2000s that landed him in house of correction, or roles few actors could pull off, such as his best actor Oscar-nominated performance in Chaplin.

When Ben Stiller phoned him a year or so ago, Downey wondered if he had for good met his match.

The role Stiller was offering Downey was an odd one.

It was for the action-comedy Tropic Thunder co-written and to be under the necessity existence directed by Stiller.

Stiller was targeting Downey to romp the character Kirk Lazarus, a roguish, hardcore, method-style Australian actor.

Mastering an Aussie accent was the light part.

The great challenge for Downey was he not only had to play Aussie ocker Lazarus, but also play Lazarus portraying an African American army sergeant, Lincoln Osiris.

Confused?

So was Downey.

“Yeah, sure I was,” the actor laughed during an interview at a West Hollywood hotel recently.

Tropic Thunder is a spoof of Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill and other 1980s Hollywood films set during the Vietnam War.

The story follows a group of pampered, self-obsessed actors, including Lazarus, as they attempt to shoot a war movie in a jungle in Southeast Asia.

The actors make a false step into an area controlled by a drug syndicate, but are so self-absorbed they work not realise the heavily-armed traffickers who chopped off their director’s head are the real deal.

They think they are other actors and it’s all part of the movie.

Stiller, who also stars in Tropic Thunder, recruited a who’s who of A-List Hollywood acting ableness including Nick Nolte, Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey, Tobey Maguire, Jon Voight, Alicia Silverstone and a remarkable cameo by a hard to recognise Tom Cruise, to act alongside Downey.

Stiller pokes fun at Hollywood in the film.

And he’s in hot water with disability groups in the US for the repeated use of the word “retard” in one scene.

Downey also knew he was treading in sensitive territory as white Australian Lazarus playing African American Sgt Osiris.

“There were times I was a little freaked out where I thought ‘If I do this wrong it’s kind of my fault’,” Downey said.

Downey’s Lazarus, who some critics believe is modelled on Russell Crowe, is a five-time Oscar winner and is so dedicated to pulling off a believable performance as Sgt Osiris he undergoes an operation to darken his pelt.

Downey is hopeful African Americans will not be offended.

“If you regard the movie, it’s a non-issue,” he said.

“If you read the script, initially you would say ‘This is probably a non-issue’, but in that place’s a lot of things that have to be managed and handled correctly down to the look and execution.”

Tropic Thunder, dubbed by some American critics as the funniest film of 2008, will continue a golden year for Downey suppose that it lives up to the hype.

Not too long ago Hollywood studios and directors deemed Downey a liability because of his drug history, but this year he clawed his way on the frontier to the top of the industry with the lucky hit of the exploit film, Iron Man.

In October, he begins Sherlock Holmes with adviser Guy Ritchie in London.

The actor is taking the success in his stride.

“Oh yeah, I’m soooo on top of Hollywood ,” Downey dismisses.

“I’brawl in the missionary position.

“But, yeah, I’ve been at petty much every level of Hollywood.”

These days, his meet face to face is plastered across billboards and storehouse covers.

Seven years ago, if Downey’s photo was in a gazette, it was likely one of his crowd police mug shots.

In April 2001 he, was arrested while police found the actor wandering dazed in an alleyway after midnight in a seedy area of west Los Angeles.

He was arrested on want of confidence of being under the influence of a controlled substance.

The officers were correct.

A urine discriminative characteristic detected Downey had cocaine in his rule.

Five months earlier, police fix cocaine and methamphetamine in his Palm Springs hotel room.

Just three months in the sight of the Palm Springs bust, Downey had walked out of Corcoran state jail, located in the desert three hours arctic of Los Angeles.

An exasperated umpire sent him to the bridewell for repeatedly violating probation for a 1996 arrest for drug property, driving in subordination to the influence and carrying a concealed weapon.

Rehab and close friends, including Mel Gibson, who has had his own brushes with the law and an addiction problem, helped Downey through it.

The operator also found stability with his 2005 marriage to film producer, Susan Levin.

Downey says his life is now structured, with martial arts and tennis helping him control his dark side.

“It’s in the same manner as a triangle,” he explains.

“I have to have my head screwed on straight.

“I have to have my body in a certain shape and I be favored with to not learn too excited or pissed off and everything is cool.”

Downey’session approach to mastering an accent, whether it is Aussie ocker Lazarus, African American Sgt Osiris or British super sleuth Sherlock Holmes, is not so structured.

He says the most excellent course to explain it is to imagine you are dialing through the channels on a radio.

It be possible to take hours, days, weeks or months to find the accent.

“Most of the measure it’s static, but then it goes ‘This is BBC London’ and I go ‘What is that common occurrence?’,” Downey explains.

The right accents have popped into his head during the time that he is dreaming and they have approach while he is sitting on the stoop reading a book.

The Aussie one was quick, although he rejects he based it on Crowe.

Sgt Osiris was more difficult.

He was not sure he had it until he called Stiller any generation and tested his Sgt Osiris voice.

“He said ‘That’s good’,’ Downey recalled.

“I could tell by the tone in his voice he wasn’t placating me.

“When that voice came from one side, everything else was really easy because I felt the guy was speech what he wanted to say so that took the pressure off me because I was true ornery when we were shooting.”

Downey is enjoying being back at the top in Hollywood.

There’s two Iron Man sequels in the works that bequeath earn him a reported $US30 million-plus($A34.52 million) and the feeling in Tinseltown is he will finally be rewarded with an Oscar in the next few years.

The agent is not getting carried away, however.

He knows the demons he left at the back seven years ago are lurking nearby.

“Success is big,” he said.

“It’s also a lot of work.

“It’s a lot of anxiety.

“It’s a lot of things.

“Sometimes you have to have being careful that which you wish for.”

Tropic Thunder opens in Australia August 21.

AAP

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