Robert Downey Jr. could be about to join an exclusive actors club by becoming just the fourth person to win both an Oscar and an Emmy for acting in the same calendar year.
Downey Jr. won Best Supporting Actor at this year’s Oscars for his portrayal of Lewis Strauss in “Oppenheimer.” That Christopher Nolan biopic, which also won Best Picture, followed Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer and depicted the scientist’s creation, and later guilt, of the atomic bomb. Downey Jr’s Strauss was a politician who was once an ally of Oppenheimer only to become his rival. Downey Jr’s portrayal of Strauss, the film’s villain, made him the obvious choice for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar and that remained throughout awards season. He won the BAFTA, Critics Choice, Golden Globe, and SAG awards before he eventually won the Academy Award, beating fellow Oscar nominees Sterling K. Brown (“American Fiction”), Robert De Niro (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Ryan Gosling (“Barbie”), and Mark Ruffalo (“Poor Things”).
Now, Downey Jr. is up for Best TV Movie/Limited Series Supporting Actor at the Emmys. He is recognized for his performance as multiple characters in “The Sympathizer,” which follows a North Vietnam plant in the South Vietnam Army who flees to the USA at the end of the Vietnam War and continues to spy and report back to the Viet Cong. Downey Jr. appears in several antagonistic roles, including a CIA agent, a grad school professor, a Californian Congressman, a priest who is the plant’s father, and a filmmaker making a film about the Vietnam War.
Downey Jr’s acting chops are on full display here as he utilizes different accents and looks for each character, disappearing into the roles an creating multiple, distinct, different people. He is nominated alongside Tom Goodman-Hill (“Baby Reindeer”), John Hawkes (“True Detective: Night Country”), Lamorne Morris (“Fargo”), Lewis Pullman (“Lessons in Chemistry”), and Treat Williams (“Feud: Capote vs the Swans”). Downey Jr. has a great chance of taking home the gold here as we think it’s a straight-up tussle between him and Pullman.
If Downey Jr. were to win, he would become only the third other person to win Oscar and Emmy acting awards in the same calendar year.
George C. Scott was the first thespian to accomplish this feat when he won both prizes in 1971. He won the Best Actor Oscar for “Patton” before taking home Best Single Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for “Hallmark Hall of Fame” for the episode “The Price.”
Helen Hunt then won Best Actress at the 1998 Oscars for “As Good as It Gets” before she claimed her third of four consecutive Emmys for Best Comedy Actress for “Mad About You.”
Another Helen – this time, Helen Mirren — became the third person to achieve this feat in 2007. Mirren won Best Actress for “The Queen” at the Oscars and then won Best TV Movie/Limited Series Actress for “Prime Suspect: The Final Act.”
Downey Jr. could be the fourth person in this club, although Pullman is at the top of our odds chart at this time of writing. However, Downey Jr. ticks off a lot of boxes of typical winners in this category. He is typically a movie star — voters often nominate movie stars in this category, such as Ben Whishaw (“A Very English Scandal”), Jeff Daniels (“Godless”), Alexander Skarsgård (“Big Little Lies”), and Bill Murray (“Olive Kitteridge”). Plus, Murray, like Downey Jr, is a mega-wattage star. Voters like nominating those kinds of actors here, too.
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