Robert Downey Jr Did The Most 'Destructive' Thing After His First Meeting With Tom Cruise

Robert Downey Jr is currently basking in the reflection of the thirteen nominations, his last release Oppenehimer has bagged for the Academy Awards. The Chritopher Nolan directorial features Downey Jr in the role of Lewis Strauss. 

He is undoubtedly the most respected and talented actor in Hollywood. While he has made a reputation for himself as a man of great admiration, his public image was not always this clean due to some incidents. One of them was his first meeting with Tom Cruise. 

Downey Jr appeared on David Letterman's talk show many years ago and spoke about his first meeting with Cruise. What happened next has many of his fans in shock. 

Downey Jr opens up about his first meeting with Tom Cruise 

Downey revealed that he decided to play a game with the Mission: Impossible actor. He said, "First time I met Tom Cruise, we were at my friend's house and were playing ping-pong right. Cause he's like, 'let's do something competitive'. So, playing ping-pong with him, and I'm ecstatic because he has clearly wiped me out, 21 to 4."

Despite this massive loss, Downey Jr. maintained his competitive personality. The actor revealed that he ended up getting onto the ping pong table in anger and breaking it into 

small pieces. "But then I jumped the net. I splintered this thing into about 6000 pieces. Clearly hammered," Downey Jr. said. He further added, "He was just feeling fear and sadness, I think. You know. He hasn't called me since. Tom, drop a line." 

Christopher Nolan reveals he was ‘little afraid’ of Downey Jr. when they first met 

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Nolan opened up about his meeting with Downey Jr and mentioned how he was not interested in casting Robert for Batman. Speaking about the same, Nolan said, “I 100% knew you weren’t the guy [for Scarecrow].” He added, “In my head that was already cast. But I always wanted to meet you…I was a huge admirer of yours and therefore selfishly just wanted to take the meeting. But I was also a little afraid of you, you know. I had heard all kinds of stories about how you were crazy. It was only a few years after the last of those stories that had come out about you.”