Robert Downey Jr .: from being found unconscious in an alley to becoming one of the highest paid stars
Hollywood loves boom and bust stories, but none surpasses that of the 'Iron Man' interpreter
He was 6 years old when his father gave him a marijuana joint to try, 28 when he was nominated for an Oscar and 31 when he woke up in jail in a pool of his own blood. Today Robert Downey Jr. is one of the highest paid actors in history: he held that position on the Forbes list between 2013 and 2015, has remained in the top positions in recent years and, presumably, after pocketing $ 75 million. (according to calculations by media such as The Guardian) for the recent Avengers: Endgame, will return to lead 2019. The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald assured that the lives of Americans do not have a second act, because they live them as a constant preparation for something that never comes, but Downey Jr. is determined to contradict him.
In November 2000 he was again arrested in a hotel with amphetamines and four grams of cocaine. And when a few months later he was found barefoot huddled in a rat-infested alley, he begged the police not to arrest him
"When my father and I got high together it was as if he tried to express his love in the only way he knew how," the actor clarified in the book The New Breed: Actors Coming of Age. The actor remembers falling asleep every night lulled by the sound of poker cards hitting the felt. The 1980s press predicted that he was destined to be "the greatest actor of his generation," but in 1996 the headlines endorsed him with another label: the umpteenth Hollywood junkie. Downey Jr. was arrested driving high on, as he would describe in Rolling Stone years later, "the best cocaine I had ever had since messing with my father and Jack Nicholson."
In the glove compartment he carried heroin and a Magnum 357. A month later he starred in a version of Goldilocks when he went to the wrong house and fell asleep in the (empty) bed of his neighbor's son. The call of the owner of the house to the police accompanied by the snoring of the actor in the background was leaked on the Internet and the press (orphan of sensational trials after the sentence of O. J. Simpson) came across a perfect broken toy.
Sean Penn and Dennis Quaid dragged him to a rehab center. After escaping through the bathroom window, Downey Jr. hitchhiked in a Hawaiian shirt and hospital pants to a friend's house in Malibu. The police arrested him drugged driving his Porsche, naked and throwing imaginary rats out of the window. "Every day I look at the newspaper," explained her former manager, turned into a jewelry designer after getting fed up with dealing with her actors' addictions, "thinking I'm going to find Robert's obituary."
No doctor diagnosed him with bipolarity, but People magazine did and Hollywood stopped trusting him. “Sometimes I want to go out and buy everything and other times I just want to watch sports, masturbate and eat ice cream. But that does not mean that he is depressed or that he is a maniac. I was diagnosed with a psychological disorder by a doctor who did not know that I was smoking crack in his bathroom. You can't make a diagnosis until the patient is sober, damn it, ”the actor would defend himself in an interview with Esquire.
A year later, Downey Jr. skipped a drug check and was sentenced to 113 days in prison. "I will never tell the worst things that happened to me in prison," he says, although it is known that the prisoners took it with him and his face needed cosmetic surgery after one of the beatings. His friend, director Oliver Stone, put his talents as a gruesome storyteller to use when she assured him that he was concerned for his safety: sexual towards Robert ”.
In 1999 he failed to appear for another narcotics test, a violation of his probation that culminated in a three-year sentence. Downey Jr. pleaded with the judge not to send him back to jail: "I feel like I have a shotgun in my mouth, my finger on the trigger and I like the taste of that metal." In Corcoran Prison, home to Charles Manson at the time, the best actor of his generation was reduced to "inmate P50522." The Oscar nominee for Chaplin scraped pizza trays for eight cents an hour. During the year he spent at Corcoran, he only found relief in a Sting record, and after leaving it would take him seven days to get a job in Hollywood: his appearance in Ally McBeal increased the show's audience by 11%.
A year later, Downey Jr. skipped a drug check and was sentenced to 113 days in prison. "I will never tell the worst things that happened to me in prison," she says, although it is known that the prisoners took her with him and his face needed cosmetic surgery after one of the beatings. His friend, director Oliver Stone, put his talents as a gruesome storyteller to use when he said he was concerned for their safety: "When we shot Born Murderers in a real jail it was very clear that inmates had a sexual fascination for Robert."
In 1999 he failed to appear for another narcotics test, a violation of his probation that culminated in a three-year sentence. Downey Jr. pleaded with the judge not to send him back to jail: "I feel like I have a shotgun in my mouth, my finger on the trigger and I like the taste of that metal." In Corcoran Prison, home to Charles Manson at the time, the best actor of his generation was reduced to "inmate P50522." The Oscar nominee for Chaplin scraped pizza trays for eight cents an hour. During the year he spent at Corcoran, he only found relief in a Sting record, and after leaving it would take him seven days to get a job in Hollywood: his appearance in Ally McBeal increased the show's audience by 11%.
His charisma, his melancholy and his sly sensibilities earned him a Golden Globe for Ally McBeal, but he would admit that at that stage he was hitting rock bottom. "At the time, I didn't give a shit if he never performed again." On Thanksgiving Day in November 2000, he was again arrested in a hotel with amphetamines and four grams of cocaine. And when a few months later he was found huddled barefoot in a rat-infested alley, he begged the police not to arrest him: "Please don't do it, you're going to ruin my life." His wife, singer Deborah Falconer, left him taking his son Indio (born 1993), his participation in The Couple of the Year was canceled and the producers of Ally McBeal fired him.
On Independence Day 2003, Downey Jr. stopped at a Burger King on the Pacific Coast Highway and, while eating a hamburger, decided that he had had enough and threw all his drugs into the ocean.
Elton John publicly supported him by signing him for his video clip I Want Love. But when Woody Allen tried to hire him along with Winona Ryder for Melinda and Melinda, he discovered that no insurance company was willing to cover the policy on his contracts: they were considered too volatile. However, Downey Jr. had the industry on his side. He never starred in altercations, was never late for any shoot, and always enthusiastically lifted the team's spirits.
His friend Mel Gibson, whom he met while filming Air America in 1990, paid for the insurance out of her pocket for him to star in The Singing Detective (Keith Gordon, 2003). The critics fell in love with him again and David Fincher explained that he hired him for Zodiac because "his character disappears in the middle of the film, so he had to give it to an actor who leaves his mark so that the public will miss him when he is not there" . On Independence Day 2003, Downey Jr. stopped at a Burger King on the Pacific Coast Highway. While eating a hamburger he decided that he had had enough and threw all of his drugs into the ocean. Pilates, oriental philosophy, meditation, and kung fu channeled his withdrawal syndrome and he has not stopped attending therapy since.
"When I go into a hotel, people don't know if I'm coming to a shiatsu class or they're going to have to tackle me," he joked. Two years later he married producer Susan Levin, whom he credits as his savior, and Sting performed at the ceremony. This was already the happy ending for Robert Downey Jr., but what happened next is surprising.
There were no good times for superheroes in the movies. X-Men 3, Spiderman 3, Superman Returns or The Incredible Hulk had disappointed the public. When the comic book publisher Marvel founded its own film production company in 2007 it did not have the rights to its most popular intellectual properties (Spiderman and X-Men) so they started with Iron Man: the success of Batman Begins suggested that the public preferred technological gadgets to magic and fantasy, so that arrogant businessman Tony Stark seemed like the newest, most credible, and cheapest superhero to produce. More James Bond than Thor. Director Jon Favreau suggested Robert Downey Jr. But Marvel wanted Tom Cruise: "Under no circumstances are we prepared to hire him, at any price."
During the year he spent in Corcoran prison he only found relief in a Sting record. After leaving, it would take him seven days to get a job in Hollywood: his appearance in 'Ally McBeal' increased the audience by 11%
Favreau convinced them by promising that Downey Jr. would do for his saga what Johnny Depp had done for Pirates of the Caribbean: bring the electric energy of a fringe actor forged in auteur cinema, dance with his dialogues like a jazz musician and be “ a man who makes others enjoy ”. The actor auditioned for the first time since Chaplin and Marvel could no longer consider others. He was Tony Stark (that is, Iron Man). A guy delighted to meet, a Cary Grant who comes from a walk on the dark side, a yuppie who had it all and, after living in captivity, struggles to get ahead as a new man. After escaping his kidnapping, the first thing Tony Stark did was go to a Burger King. And when Gwyneth Paltrow discovered his superhero identity, Downey Jr. winked at the audience: "Let's face it, this isn't the worst thing you've caught me doing."
The first commercial triumph of his career was crowned that same year with an Oscar nomination for Tropic Thunder (Ben Stiller, 2008) thanks to a satirical character (an actor who pigments his skin to play a black man) who today would cause fainting in Hollywood law firms. In 2009 Sherlock Holmes (Guy Ritchie, 2009) validated his return to his house: “When you spend years, decades marginalized and watching from the outside, you have to be an idiot to play badly when you finally get a winning hand. And, apart from certain devastating genetic weaknesses, I am not an idiot, ”he explains.
Iron Man has saved the world several times, but he has also saved Robert Downey Jr. and in the process has made him one of the highest grossing actors in history. He collected half a million euros for Iron Man, with a contract that involved him in two possible sequels for which he ended up winning 9 and 28 million. But the rest had to be renegotiated: he has received 67 million five times (Avengers and its sequel, Civil War, Infinity War and Endgame). "Before Iron Man, I couldn't even afford a Golf GTI," recalls a guy who now has a retro collection of 24 high-end cars.
Downey Jr., unlike most Hollywood stars, openly acknowledges his salary in any of the interviews that (in a brilliant maneuver by his publicist) take place at his home and are usually accidentally interrupted by a visit from his wife. and his son Exton, who is now 7 years old. He also gives the journalist a guided tour of his mansion, as if to make it clear that he has nothing to hide. His brand image is familiar, although he hardly talks about his son Indio (26 years old), who was arrested with cocaine shortly before the premiere of Iron Man 3.
Downey Jr. has not made a non-Marvel movie for five years. He has served as a leader in front of and behind the cameras: in Iron Man, a film shot without a script or money, he had to improvise his dialogues, setting the pace, tone and sensitivity for the characters who were arriving after him.
His disproportionate salary in Spiderman Homecoming, 2017 (13 million for three days of work) responded to the need to introduce Spiderman, owned for 15 years by Sony, into the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Tony Stark as godfather. That's why Peter Parker's two interactions with Stark (at the end of Infinity War and Endgame) broke fans' hearts.
Now his contract has ended and Tony Stark's story has concluded understanding that in this life you have to know how to surround yourself with a team instead of going around like a lone wolf. But that's a lesson that Robert Downey Jr. already learned many years ago.
