We talk a lot about the decline of the Movie Star. About how the real Movie Stars aren’t being supported the way they were, how the Movie Star has to share with the Reality Star, how the Reality Star might be killing the Movie Star.

But while many of those Movie Stars have suffered serious setbacks, there is one Movie Star who keeps rising. He saved himself. And in doing so, he just might save some of his peers. Would you have believed 10 years ago that Robert Downey Jr would be keeping the Movie Star alive?

RDJ is currently promoting Sherlock 2. He appeared on The Tonight Show last night and told Jay Leno - and the world - that he and his wife Susan are expecting a baby boy due in February. I love that he wasn’t so precious about it either. You know how celebrities can be extra extra precious about revealing the sex of their babies? In part, or in most, actually, because they’re trying to leverage how much money they can get out of the situation?

With his Iron Man and Sherlock paycheques, RDJ doesn’t need the cash. But is he doing it to pimp his project? The convenience of the announcement timed with his upcoming release?

Everyone’s a famewhore, and that very well may have been the case. With RDJ though, he doesn’t bother pretending it’s NOT the case. When you remove the pretense then from the situation, it levels the field. He is acknowledging you as an equal in his game.

“For me, anything that’s happening in public is going to have a level of gamesmanship to it. If someone really offended me, I wouldn’t say anything about it publicly. I’d wait for a quiet moment and have it out to their face. Or, more likely, I’d shrug and ask myself why I should care.”

It’s a great quote, isn’t it? He’s always good for a great quote. He’s good for a LOT of great quotes in a new interview with Jon Wilde for The Daily Mail. Because while he can admit to trying to play you, he comes by it honestly, and in doing so, he gives us a lot more honesty than so many of his contemporaries.  

You can’t go to where he’s been and come back to Hollywood and revert to that kind of fraud. Or continue to believe the bullsh-t they feed you there every single day. How can he when he lied to himself for years about addiction? In an industry where almost all of it is fake, is it possible that a recovered addict has returned to become the most authentic Modern Movie Star?

If that’s the case, everyone else should be following his philosophy. And according to RDJ’s playbook, he would rather you read my blog than PEOPLE Magazine:   

‘The media are always looking for a spat, and I have to say that I love it, even when it’s about me. I love tabloid reality, for the reason that everything is true in the moment that you read it. It doesn’t occur to me when I’m reading it that it might just be made-up garbage. I’ll take that kind of thing any day over sycophantic, over-respectful journalism where everyone is a member of the same club and all the uncomfortably sharp edges are smoothed over to save face. Which is just as bad as lying.”

RIGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHT???????????????

Yes.

YES.

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And this is why, unlike so many of those assholes huffing and puffing about Ricky Gervais, RDJ understands it’s all part of the ecosystem:

“The truth is that I like Ricky Gervais and I’ve seen him around. I’ve just heard that he’s been invited back to host the Golden Globes in 2012. So, he wins. End of story.”

I f-cking love him.

This I will buy. Over and over and over again. I’ll be at Sherlock 2. He’ll get my money at least twice.

And again, who would have thought? That Robert Downey Jr would become the great Hope, the Luke Skywalker of Movie Stars. I just cracked myself up writing that.

Click here to read the full interview at The Daily Mail.