Robert Downey Jr's action Sherlock

05-08-2008 13:30

Robert Downey Jr. will use his martial arts skills when portraying Sherlock Holmes.The 'Iron Man' star says director Guy Ritchie is planning an "action-packed" depiction of the fictional detective in his forthcoming movie, and will make good use of Holmes' lesser-known skill.He revealed: "Guy Ritchie's take on it was that it's like we'll be making a contemporary version of a very classic portrayal of exactly how it was. But it's not telling one of the stories from one of the books or anything like that. "The cool thing about Sherlock Holmes was he's actually a very skilled martial artist. So it's going to have elements of that, it's not just his deduction and all that stuff. It's going to be a very action-packed version of that. To me it's really exciting."Robert promised the action scenes will be "interesting" because both he and Guy share a love of martial arts.He added to IESB.net: "I'm always training. I'm big into martial arts. We're putting together a team of people, we're going to try to do something a little more transcendent and interesting."I love the idea of martial arts and bare-knuckle boxing...before the Queensbury rules, where it was all kind of proper, it was this real balls-to-the-wall, brutal type stuff. Guy Ritchie's a martial artist, and martial arts student, so we're going to have a real fun time doing all that."