Dear RDJ

A drawing of baby Robert Downey Jr. wearing an Iron Man shirt

Robert Downey: A futurist knows

Robert Downey Jr. has become one of the most powerful players in Hollywood. But the 48-year-old actor admits he’s not much of a networker. “I think about people, and I have a conversation with them in my head,” he says. “But I tend to not reach out.” In an interview about his career and the future of the movie industry, the Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes actor tellsFortune about the real-life discussions (Elon Musk!) that have influenced his thinking about technology, business, and entertainment. Edited portions of the interview will appear in the January 13 issue of Fortune; a lengthier excerpt of the Q&A follows.

You have a production company, Team Downey. What is your vision for it, and how do you and Susan think about your roles as leaders of that organization?

Susan had a perfectly sound (producing) career before we met, and she started producing the films I was starring in. And then the real aha moment was when we decided what we really would like to do is develop our own material do to together. And we had just had our first experience with that in this film called Judge, which will be out next fall. And our vision has always been we kind of tend to like and talk about the same hundred movies when we’re referring to films we would like the films we’re doing to be like. And so we realized we had a very kind of simpatico sensibility.

Ultimately really it comes down to it’s kind of like being a venture capitalist for a bigger organization in that, you know, we are in a relationship with a studio (Warner Brothers) and not only do we not want to lose them a penny, we want them to feel that we’re one of their great earners, and also that they really appreciate our sensibilities artistically.

What I’ve had over the last decade or so is a crash course in producing, which on some days I would tell you is the absolute worst job in the world because certain aspects of it are like being a volunteer fire person. And it’s very thankless.

There’s — I guess the glory in it is that you’re someone who really cares about helping other people achieve their goals. And so it’s been the exact opposite of being a kind of a self-centered actor.