At this point it seems ridiculous to call any role a stretch for Robert Downey, Jr., given that he's just pulled off a role in blackface. But the gifted actor himself seems to be wondering what he'll be able to do as Sherlock Holmes in Guy Ritchie's adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's classic stories. At a junket for Tropic Thunder, Downey Jr. told journalists "I feel like Sherlock Holmes is out there somewhere, and I got my little ham radio on to find his frequency, but I've got nothing yet."

And before you start thinking you'll see Downey Jr. wearing a quilted plaid hat and walking around with a magnifying glass, how about adding martial arts to that picture? "We're both [Downey Jr. and Ritchie] martial arts enthusiasts and historically, in the real origin stories of Sherlock Holmes, he's kind of a bad-ass and a bare-knuckle boxer and studies the rare art of baritsu." Yeah, believe it. The historical record sure has been leaving out the juicy stuff, hasn't it?

Premiere.com has the rest of Downey Jr.'s chatter about Holmes, including some fretting about wasting his time promoting Tropic Thunder when maybe he should be working on putting Sherlock together. Something tells me that, come October 6, when the movie starts shooting, Downey Jr. will have somehow pulled it off again.