Perennial cool guy (and real life Tony Stark) Robert Downey Jr. took it upon himself to share a fan family’s Avengers photo on his Twitter account.
“MOBILE, Alabama – Just when the Paragones had gotten over the social media attention they received last month, when George Takei shared a link to a website that included a two-year-old Halloween photo of their family, out of the blue on Friday actor-director Robert Downey Jr. shared the same photo.
“Not many can pull off the Iron Man swag. This kid nailed it,” Downey wrote in his status update around noon on Friday. “Kudos to the whole fam.”
The photo of Christopher and Christy Paragone and their four sons as “The Avengers” was taken in October of 2012 on Royal Street in downtown Mobile. The Paragones hired photographer Stephanie Massey to take their annual Halloween photo.
“And just think, you were going to settle for a ‘studio backdrop’ shot,” Massey wrote on Christopher Paragone’s Facebook page when he shared Downey Jr.’s link.
The actor knows a thing or two about “the Iron Man swag.” He portrayed the character Tony Stark in “Iron Man” (2008), “Iron Man 2” (2010), “The Avengers” (2012), “Iron Man 3” (2013) and the forthcoming “Avengers: Age of Ultron” (2015).
Downey Jr. has nearly 21 million likes on his Facebook page. The photo of the Paragones, featuring Matthew as Iron Man, had 453,760 likes and had been shared 14,632 times in the first five hours it was on RDJ’s page.
Christopher Paragone’s niece in North Carolina was “playing around on the internet” earlier in the day when she happened to notice RDJ’s status update. “Look who I found!” she told her uncle.
Paragone, executive director of Azalea City Center for the Arts and owner/director of Drama Camp Productions in Mobile, couldn’t help feeling a bit star-struck by the experience. “He actually looked at the picture. He didn’t just share it,” he said. “It was probably the publicist who did it, but I’m going to think it was Robert Downey Jr.”
Underneath the photo, Paragone commented: “Thanks Robert Downey Jr. for sharing our family photo. Our kids love the Avengers movies and they really wanted to do this for Halloween. My awesome wife agreed and here we are!”
Though the photo has gotten a lot of mileage on social media, Paragone has plans for it to resurface again in the future. “Don’t think when our kids are grown we won’t re-do it,” he said.
“I told my wife, when you’re 60 you’re going to be back in the black leather (as The Black Widow), so prepare for that now.””
Source: AL.com
