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Jun 2010  |  By Liz Logan  |  Comments (0)

Robert Downey Jr.: The Make It Better Interview

TAGS: Robert Downey Jr., Gene Siskel Film Center

Robert Downey Jr., the original Hollywood bad boy, showed up at the Ritz Carlton recently to receive the Renaissance Award from the Gene Siskel Film Center.

And Make It Better was there, waiting to ask the man in a suit and high tops—who looks just as good as ever—a few questions.

MIB: How do you give back to the community?

RDJ: There’s always an opportunity to be of service in any industry town. I personally feel that multi-service centers are hugely under-considered part of any town. I’ll probably start looking into that kind of thing in the future.

MIB: You met your wife, Susan, on the set of a movie she was producing. What made you decide recently to start producing films together?

RDJ: She’s my favorite producer. Things tend to go better when we work together. It eliminates a lot of the issues, and we can have even more autonomy than we already do.

MIB: Your father was a filmmaker. What advice did he give you about being in the industry?

RDJ: Not much. More so just by showing me movies he thought were great, and by making a few great ones himself. His whole thing was, “Don’t keep making the same mistakes. Go out and make new ones.”

Photos by Kathryn Achenbach