Robert Downey Jr. has finally won his first Oscar
More than 30 years after first being nominated for Chaplin, Robert Downey Jr. has brought home his very first Oscar

Photo: Mike Coppola/Getty Images
After what’s been a very long and winding road, Robert Downey Jr. has just won his first Oscar—more than 30 years after picking up his first nomination for the honor. Tonight, Downey won in the Best Supporting Actor category for his work in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, where he played Rear Admiral Lewis Strauss—eventually revealed to be the closest thing Nolan’s biopic has to a conventional villain. It’s a performance that drew out many of Downey’s best qualities as an actor, surface-level charm spackling over deep anger and insecurity, creating a stomach-churning portrayal of a man raging at living in the shadow of greatness, aware in the moment that he’s little more than a living footnote in the biographies of more important people.