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Robert Downey, Jr’s 2008 portrayal of Iron Man helps kickstart Marvel’s $3 billion cinematic universe.  In the ‘90’s, he was far from Iron Man.  His addictions to drugs and alcohol nearly cost him everything-even his life.  This week, I’ll chronicle the Dark Side of the ‘90’s episode on Robert Downey, Jr.

“I had a really serious, sick love affair with cocaine”.  In July 2000, NBC News ventured inside the California State Prison Center where Charles Manson is locked up to interview an equally famous prisoner, 35-year-old Robert Downey, Jr.  At the time of the interview, Downey was 12 months into his 3-year sentence for a litany of drug offenses, including possession of heroin and cocaine.  However, not even prison is enough to split up Downey and “the lady” (what addicts call heroin).

Born in Manhattan on April 4, 1965, Downey Jr’s mother Elsie is an actress.  His father, Robert Downey, Sr, who was an Avant-guard independent filmmaker.  It’s in one of his father’s experimental films that his 5-year-old son gets his first acting role.  The issues of Sr, a lifelong addict, contribute to Jr’s parent’s divorce in 1978.  After his dad relocated to Los Angeles, Downey Jr followed him to Hollywood.  He attended Santa Monica High School with Rob Lowe, Charlie Sheen and Sean Penn, among others.

At 17, Downey drops out of high school to pursue acting.  Within a year, he lands his first big role playing a nasty kid named Lee in the movie First Born.  Also in the movie is future Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker.  The two soon start dating.  During this time, he lands the role of a mean kid in the movie Weird Science, directed by the late John Hughes.  After Weird Science, Downey is hired by Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels who, after quitting the show in 1980, returned to SNL five years later.  The drug legacy of SNL’s past is still around, and Downey was out every night enjoying it.  Despite his work ethic, season 11 of SNL is seen as one of the weakest in the history of the show. Downey, like many other cast members, isn’t invited back. Two years later, Downey Jr lands the role of Julian in the film Less Than Zero.  The character Julian was a drug addict.  For Downey, Jr, life would soon be imitating art.  

Downey’s manager forces him to take his first trip to rehab.  She soon learns that no good deed goes unpunished.  Downey pushes her out while clinging to his drug habit.  His habit was, amazingly, not interfering with his work.  The ‘90’s open with Downey co-starring in the action-comedy Air America alongside another actor with a history of addiction, Mel Gibson.  Downey stayed clean during the movie but went back to his old ways after the movie wraps.  In 1990, he and Sarah Jessic Parker call it quits.

Less than a year later, he starts dating singer-actress Debra Falconer, who keeps up with Downey Jr’s hard partying ways.  At the same time, Downey is finishing filming the role that would define him as an actor for decades, Charlie Chaplin in the movie Chaplin.  His role as Chaplin mesmerized fellow actors and directors.  He was so good that he garnered an Oscar nomination for the role.  

On the personal side, Downey Jr would soon be faced with a DUI and drug charge that would put him in front of a judge.  He was released from jail and, a month later, was back at it.  Downey tries to play his addiction for laughs when he hosts Saturday Night Live.  

A judge sends Downey to L.A. County Central Men’s Jail, home of violent offenders, for 113 days.  The judge lets Downey leave to act in movies (I’m not sure what type of judge would sign off on that).  That didn’t sit well with other inmates, and Downey got attacked.  After release, Downey looks for work in any movies to finance his addiction.  By 1999, whatever compassion anyone had for Robert had run out.  A judge sentences Downey to 3 years in prison.  He’d be in the same prison as Charles Manson.  This is where we started this piece with the 2000 interview.  

Downey would prove to be a model prisoner and released after only serving 15 months of his sentence.  Just recently out of prison, Downey Jr gets added to the cast of Ally McBeal in season 4.  Three months later, he was arrested again for drug possession.  Again, his drug use wasn’t affecting his work, so David E. Kelley kept him on the Ally McBeal cast.  In January 2001, he won a Golden Globe for his role as Ally’s boyfriend.  

Three months later, Downey is arrested again wandering the streets and on drugs.  David E Kelley has no choice but to fire him.  A law change saves Downey from another stint behind bars.  When it comes to acting, there wasn’t an insurance company in America that would let Downey step on another movie set.  In the language of addiction, Downey had finally hit rock bottom.  

His unemployment meant he had nothing but time to focus on his sobriety.  He stayed sober and passed the drug test.  He impresses the judge, prosecutor, everyone he has to impress.  In 2003, when no one else will, his old friend and co-star from Air America, Mel Gibson, offers Downey the lead role in a movie called The Singing Detective.  To get around the insurance company’s boycott of Downey, Gibson personally underwrites the movie with his own money.

Despite the film’s mostly negative reviews from critics, Gibson’s generosity resuscitates Downey’s career.  That same year, he appeared in the psychological horror flick Gothika with Halle Berry.  He met his current wife of 20 years in that movie.  Two years after getting married, Downey lands the role that transforms him from award-winning actor to global superstar, Iron Man.  Ironically, Iron Man, in the comics, is an alcoholic.  He’s glib, silly, funny-not a serious superhero.  Iron Man is the first movie in what will become Marvel’s $30 billion cinematic universe.  As the face of the franchise, it makes Downey one of the richest actors on the planet.

Downey finally digs deeper into his own life when he produces a documentary in 2022 called SR, about his father.  The documentary is available to stream on Netflix.  The film, about his complex relationship with his father, who was dying of Parkinson’s disease during filming in 2020.  In 2021, Robert Downey, Sr dies at age 85.  He leaves behind a son finally coming into his own and whose self-sabotaging ways are very much behind him.  With his Best Supporting Actor Oscar win in 2024, Downey, now sober 22 years, is finally recognized for the talent he spent the first part of his life drowning out with drugs.  

You can find my recent vlog post here: https://youtu.be/Z9SfYVQUwUQ?si=5d38SJ5evDUNeq8z