Robert Downey Jr. has won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor at this year's Academy Awards.
The actor was nominated in the category for his performance in Christopher Nolan's biographical thriller Oppenheimer, and beat out the likes of American Fiction's Sterling K. Brown, Barbie's Ryan Gosling, Poor Things' Mark Ruffalo, and Killers of the Flower Moon's Robert De Niro. It marks Downey Jr's first-ever Oscars win, having been previously nominated for his roles in Chaplin and Tropic Thunder.
He was given the award by his Iron Man 2 co-star Sam Rockwell, in a reunion we loved to see. "I'd like to thank my terrible childhood and the academy in that order," he said before he also thanked his wife in a very touching moment, and he shouted out his co-stars. "What we do is meaningful, and the stuff that we decide to make is important."
Also starring the likes of Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, and Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer explores how the eponymous nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was tasked with setting up the Manhattan Project during World War II, and subsequently created the atomic bomb. Downey Jr. plays Lewis Strauss, the man who set out to destroy Oppenheimer's reputation, in it, acting as an antagonist of sorts to Murphy's main man.
Outside of the acting categories, in which Blunt and Murphy also got nods, Oppenheimer was up for Best Costume, Best Production Design, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Sound, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Director, and Best Picture.
For more on this year's Academy Awards, stay up to date with our Oscars 2024 live blog.
