Mr. Evans said he was relieved that “The Avengers” did not rest solely on his shoulders yet felt nervous about working alongside Marvel veterans like Samuel L. Jackson, who plays the secret agent Nick Fury, and Robert Downey Jr., the star of the blockbuster “Iron Man” movies. 

Mr. Downey was an early supporter of Mr. Evans, having quietly lobbied Mr. Evans’s agent to keep him from passing on “Captain America.” 

“I did the Eastern medicine approach,” Mr. Downey explained. “Rather than apply direct pressure, I went to the furthest meridian point.” 

The challenges that Mr. Evans faces, Mr. Downey said, are familiar to the profession and all too real: to reconcile his background as an “almost blue-collar Boston Joe” with his Hollywood trajectory; to see “Captain America” keep pace with the successes of “Iron Man” and “Thor”; and to measure up to his acting idols, a feeling Mr. Downey vividly remembered from making the 1989 drama “True Believer” with James Woods. (“If he told me to go eat the camera lens,” Mr. Downey said of Mr. Woods, “I would have.”) 

But Mr. Evans will work through these issues, Mr. Downey said, because “he has the main tool, the main arrow in his quiver already, and it’s that he’s communicative.” He added: “How do we all manage our anxiety? By not keeping it a secret.” 

— The New York Times, “Star-Spangled And Searching His Own Psyche”.