For the first time in his career, Robert Downey Jr. is an Oscar winner. Downey won this year’s Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work as Lewis Strauss in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Downey’s performance was essential to the film; a large portion of it was built around Strauss’ Senate confirmation hearing for the position of Secretary of Commerce. Strauss’ testimony, and the testimony of others, sparks flashbacks to the past, revealing how Cillian Murphy’s J. Robert Oppenheimer grew to lead the Manhattan Project which developed the world’s first atomic weapon, and then how hi…