The Santa Barbara International Film Festival announced Monday that the Oscar-nominated Oppenheimer star Robert Downey Jr. will be presented with the highest honor — the Maltin Modern Master Award — later this week.
Leonard Maltin, the film scholar for which the award was renamed in 2015, will moderate a panel with the star after the presentation on Friday, February 9, at the Arlington Theatre.
For his part, Maltin commented, “Robert Downey Jr. has staged one of the most spectacular second acts in show business history … and we in the audience are the beneficiaries. He commands the screen without any visible effort, which is perhaps the greatest feat of all.”
Previous Maltin Master Award winner — and Oppenheimer‘s Oscar-nominated director Christopher Nolan — expressed, “It’s thrilling to see audiences responding not just to Robert Downey Jr.’s incredible charisma, but to a performance which, stripped of any movie star trappings, shows once again that he is one of the greatest actors.”
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