Hollywood does not grant many fourth acts. The films below trace a specific kind of career: the performer who survives their own mythology long enough to inhabit a different one entirely.
Two of these feature the same actor at pivotal moments. Two are about entirely different men who reached a similar inflection point. What connects them is not genre, director, or decade. It is the moment when an audience expects one version of a person and the film delivers another.
Robert Downey Jr. earned his first Oscar nomination playing a man who became the most famous face in the world, then lost everything. He returned to relevance through a Shane Black neo-noir that barely made back its budget. He then launched the most successful franchise in cinema history. He returns in December not as the hero, but as the man who threatens everything the hero built.
Tickets go on sale Monday.
