Robert Downey Jr. from Brat to Icon

<p> Robert Downey Jr. may be best known as Iron Man but his career as an actor stretches back to the 1970s and features several Oscar-quality roles. He has worked with a wide range of innovative directors from Oliver Stone and Robert Altman to Richard Linklater and Shane Black and has played punk kids detectives journalists and even a serial killer.</p><p> This collection of new essays examines in roughly chronological order more than 25 of Downey's best performances in films as diverse as <I>Less Than Zero Chaplin Natural Born Killers A Scanner Darkly The Soloist</I> and <I>Tropic Thunder</I>. Including a biography chronology and filmography the book highlights the inseparability of the actor's biography from his works and from the unique combination of talents he brings to his roles.</p>