Rebecca Hall Couldn’t Match Wits With Robert Downey Jr. in ‘Iron Man 3’
Marvel once recruited actor Rebecca Hall for Robert Downey Jr.’s last Iron Man solo film. Since Iron Man 3 was very much unlike Hall’s usual work, doing the feature required a bit of a learning curve. Especially when it came to working with her co-star Downey.
Rebecca Hall felt that Robert Downey Jr is Tony Stark
Iron Man 3 stood out from Hall’s usual work. The Night House star might’ve been known for more dramatic, grounded features that were smaller in scale. Up until doing the Marvel blockbuster, Hall’s most popular films might’ve been Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige and Ben Affleck’s The Town. In a 2013 interview with The Los Angeles Times (via Daily Actor), even Hall herself acknowledged that Iron Man was a huge shift in her filmography.
“It is a departure. There’s no two ways about it,” Hall said. “It’s not like I’ve been churning away at some imaginary chess game, and I’ve now made my final move to do the kind of film that I want to do. This is not ever the kind of film that I wanted to do. The films that I’ve aspired and am interested in doing are the ones that I have done, and will carry on doing. But I think it’s important to have balance and understanding of what’s out there. I’m a big advocate of popular culture, and as far as popular culture goes, these films are the most popular around. Why wouldn’t I want to be a part of that to see how it works?”
Hall asserted that she read a few comics to prepare herself for the movie. But there might’ve been little she could do to prepare herself for working alongside Downey. She found him to be every bit as witty as his Marvel counterpart.
“I can’t even come close to matching wits with [Downey Jr], but it was fun to try,” Hall once told MTV News (via Digital Spy). “He’s a really brilliant improvisationalist, he’s incredibly quick-witted.”
“Everything he brings to Tony Stark is him. Of course, there’s all of the tradition from the comic books, the movie, and also the writing is brilliant, but a heavy dose of that character is Robert Downey Jr. He’s inspiring to work with and watch. He’s a force,” she added.
Robert Downey Jr. supported Rebecca Hall after her ‘Iron Man 3’ role was cut down
Hall’s character, scientist Maya Hansen, was supposed to have a much bigger role than she ended up with in the picture. She didn’t nearly have as much screen time as other key players in the movie like Don Cheadle or even Ben Kingsley. A bit more than halfway through the film, Hall was given a somewhat unceremonious exit. But she hinted that Hansen might’ve initially posed a much larger threat throughout the story. Still, Hall was at least able to go out on her own terms, and Downey had her back.
“I signed on to do something that was a substantial role,” Hall once told The Toronto Sun. “She wasn’t entirely the villain — there have been several phases of this — but I signed on to do something very different to what I ended up doing. Halfway through shooting they were basically like, ‘What would you think if you just got shot out of nowhere?’ I was meant to be in the movie until the end… I grappled with them for awhile and then I said, ‘Well, you have to give me a decent death scene and you have to give me one more scene with Iron Man,’ which Robert Downey Jr. supported me on.”
Rebecca Hall shared she and her co-stars spouted nonsense while filming
Hall had a couple of new experiences while shooting Iron Man 3. She wasn’t all that used to shooting CGI for one, which took some time adjusting to.
“It’s definitely outside of my comfort zone. I didn’t have to do a whole lot of it. I really wanted someone to tell me to go and, I don’t know, go to the gym eight times a week and learn some sort of obscure sort of martial arts. But no, I was playing a nerd, so I just had to carry on being me,” Hall said.
But there was also a lot of fun to be had behind the scenes that Hall wasn’t used to.
“There was loads of improvisation, and we all spouted reams and reams of nonsense. It’s quite surprising what made the film and what didn’t. I have no idea, so it was fun,” she said.
