I heard a story about Robert Downey Jr. a while back, but I can't be sure if it's factual or apocryphal anymore. It goes that, during the making of indie flick Black and White, writer-director James Toback asked that, during a scene with Mike Tyson -- yes, the Mike Tyson who eats people's ears -- Downey improv around the script and come on to the notoriously short-tempered boxer. Downey agreed, and the caught-off-guard Tyson subsequently smacked him to the ground. In other words, Downey was so committed to his role that he was willing to take a blow to the head from Mike friggin' Tyson. Whether this is true or not doesn't really matter, since, even if it isn't, I'd wager that Downey would've done it if asked. He's just that kind of actor, the kind that doesn't know limits.

In The Soloist, he stars as real-life Los Angeles Times editorialist Steve Lopez, whose friendship with a homeless schizophrenic musical prodigy named Nathanial Ayers was turned into a series of moving columns and, recently, a book. The movie's production landed the ballsy actor in Los Angeles' Skid Row, where he shot alongside Jamie Foxx as Ayers and dozens of homeless actors, many of whom were mentally ill themselves, many more addicts of various kinds. Some of their actual stories were weaved into The Soloist's narrative and had a profound impact on Downey. I sat down with him recently -- my first time meeting a man I can easily call one of my favorite living actors -- to talk about the experience, as well as to get a few words on his upcoming roles in Sherlock Holmes and Iron Man 2.

Cole Haddon: Steve Lopez said that you asked to go into his closet to see who he was. How do you decide how much you want to get to know a person when you're portraying them? Where is that line for you? And, of course, what did you find in his closet?

Robert Downey Jr.: Oh, well, you're supposing that he allowed me into his closet. He marvels at the idea that I asked. He never even dignified it with a response nor would he allow me to interview him at distance or at close range. We had a cigar together, and we talked. He wanted to tell me that to impersonate him would be to do a disservice to the movie. But it's different every time [for me]. I knew that the technical prowess and the degree of difficulty was going to fall on Jamie, and that I was to observe and report on that as if I were an audience member, and [director] Joe Wright said it was really important that I do next to nothing and listen a lot, which is very counterintuitive to my kind of ectomorphic disposition so it was an equal challenge for me in that way.

CH: How important is it not to get so involved in a character that you become indistinguishable from them?

RDJ: Job one is aesthetic distance. Mr. Jellison, my theater arts teacher from Santa Monica High School, it's right there in the first three pages of the book on Theater Arts, you know. But then it's that thing that just because you've read the owner's manual doesn't mean you can use the machine that way. But I think it's really important. I guess the thing here was it was this journey. By the end [of the movie], Catherine [Keener, who plays my ex-wife] and I were talking about [this]. We were literally talking about and writing this end scene with [our characters] in the house that [they] used to be married in, about what happened to this and that. I had this idea about likening it to the Northridge Earthquake which is something that I think every Angeleno could relate to, and then that having to do with when my own first marriage and things had started to tip up for me, and what it was and all the promise of L.A., and what it really is. So, to answer the question: You don't want to cross the line, but what you want to do is bring as much of yourself to bear as you could.

CH: This couldn't have been an easy shoot, especially considering that much of it was shot on Skid Row. As you've said, your characters had to go to some pretty difficult places, too. What did you take away from this experience?

RDJ: I took some of Jamie's wardrobe [referring to Foxx's Jesse Ventura-grade accoutrements]. [Laughs] I just remember, honestly, if I had to put it in a principle, there's was just a sense of humility, of feeling kind of right-sized when it was done, and it's hard to feel right-sized when you're done if you weren't somehow out of balance with your own perception when you started. And hopefully we are self-correcting enough, and we have enough support, and we have enough whether it's friends or the peripheral people that help make us OK, a sense of community or family or whatever it is we do to be OK. So, it's not like I need a movie to help me get my head right, you know, and I would take umbrage at the idea that there was some lesson I had to learn from the thing and all that. It's a way of infusing some Hollywood venture with profundity.

But, I do know that because of the process and the way that we did this, and the close proximity we were to each other, and the kind of stuff we wound up talking about -- and when you're downtown at 4:30 in the morning and you're seeing people who are extras, and you're seeing people who are literally going to be looking for where to sleep when the sun comes up when they're done making whatever pittance they were given for playing extras in this movie or whatever -- it was just this sense of how little direct contact I'd had with so many of the things I thought I was sure of. But really what I took away from it more than anything else was, "My God, sometimes you make a movie and sometimes the movie makes you," and this was one of those type things.

CH: Finally, what can you give me on Iron Man 2 and Sherlock Holmes?

RDJ: We start Iron Man 2 Monday [a few weeks ago now]. We're going to make a kick-ass follow-up to the movie that you all enjoyed. I got to see some footage from Sherlock at ShoWest when they were introducing it. It was really well received. We're really excited about it. I can't wait to come back and sell you some soap on Sherlock Holmes before Christmas time. I think that's going to be something special, too.

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