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Robert Downey Jr. Biography

(1965–)

Related Works

Films
1970 Pound
1972 Greaser's Palace
1975 Moment to Moment

1980 Up the Academy
1983 Baby It's You
1984 Firstborn
1985 Deadwait
1985 Tuff Turf
1985 Weird Science
1986 Back to School
1986 America
1987 The Pick-up Artist
1987 Less Than Zero
1988 Johnny Be Good
1988 Rented Lips
1969 Ralph Carr
1989 That's Adequate
1989 True Believer
1989 Chances Are
1990 Air America
1991 Too Much Sun
1991 Soapdish
1992 Chaplin
1993 Luck, Trust & Ketchup: Robert Altman in Carver Country
1993 Heart and Souls
1993 The Last Party
1993 Short Cuts
1993 Volpi Cup
1994 Hail Caesar
1994 A Century of Cinema
1994 Natural Born Killers
1994 Only You
1995 Richard III
1995 Home for the Holidays
1995 Restoration
1997 Danger Zone
1997 One Night Stand
1997 Two Girls and a Guy
1997 Hugo Pool
1998 The Gingerbread Man
1998 U.S. Marshals
1999 In Dreams
1999 Friends & Lovers
1999 Bowfinger
1999 Black and White
2000 Wonder Boys
2000 Auto Motives
2002 Lethargy
2003 Whatever We Do
2003 The Singing Detective
2003 Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin
2003 Gothika
2004 Eros
2005 Game 6
2005 The Outsider
2005 Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
2005 Good Night, and Good Luck
2005 Hubert Selby Jr: It/ll Be Better Tomorrow
2006 The Shaggy Dog
2006 A Scanner Darkly
2006 A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
2006 Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
2007 Zodiac
2007 Lucky You
2008 Charlie Bartlett
2008 Iron Man
2008 The Incredible Hulk
2008 Tropic Thunder
2009 The Soloist
2009 Sherlock Holmes
2010 Iron Man 2

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Actor. Born April 4th, 1965, in New York City. The son of the avant-garde filmmaker Robert Downey, Sr., best known for the 1969 film Putney Swope, Downey began acting as a young child. His mother, Elsie, was an actress who instilled in her son a love of performing. Raised in Greenwich Village with his older sister, Alison, Downey made his film debut playing a puppy in his father's film, Pound (1970), in which actors played dogs. He would go on to have small parts in several more of his father's films.

Downey's parents divorced when he was 13, and the young actor ended up living in Los Angeles with his father. At the age of 16, however, he dropped out of high school and was on the move again, relocating to New York to live with his mother.

Downey made his earliest feature film appearances in such films as Baby, It's You (1983), Firstborn (1984), Weird Science (1985), and Back to School (1986). From 1985 to 1986, he was a regular cast member of the popular sketch-comedy program, Saturday Night Live.

Downey's first leading role on the big screen was a charming womanizer in The Pick-up Artist (1987), a romantic comedy co-starring Molly Ringwald that was written and directed by James Toback. His breakthrough performance came in 1987 with the film Less Than Zero (1987), which co-starred Andrew McCarthy. Downey played the party loving, cocaine addicted Julian Wells in the movie.

Sadly, the story line and character rang especially true for Downey, who had been introduced to drugs at the age of eight by his father, and developed a full-fledged addiction as he headed into his 20s.

"Until that movie, I took my drugs after work and on the weekends," he later explained. "Maybe I'd turn up hungover on the set, but no more so than the stuntman. That changed on Less Than Zero. I was playing this junkie-faggot guy and, for me, the role was like the ghost of Christmas future. The character was an exaggeration of myself. Then things changed and, in some ways, I became an exaggeration of the character. That lasted far longer than it needed to last."

A stint in drug rehabilitation followed shortly afterward, but Downey's struggles with drugs and alcohol would continue. And yet, his career continued to advance forward. By the early 1990s, Downey had established a reputation as a critically acclaimed A-List actor. He earned praise for his comic turn as a shifty soap opera producer in Soapdish (1991), co-starring Sally Field, Kevin Kline, and Whoopi Goldberg. More adoration followed in a featured role in Short Cuts (1993), the critically lauded ensemble film by Robert Altman.

A particular high point was his Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in Chaplin (1992), directed by Richard Attenborough. In the highly acclaimed film, which didn't go over nearly as well with audiences as with critics, Downey nimbly portrayed the legendary Charlie Chaplin from ages 19 to 83. The role displayed his dramatic range as well as his considerable talent for physical comedy. By this time, the 27-year-old Downey had come to be seen as one of the most gifted actors of his generation, but he had also earned a reputation as a troubled and controversial figure in Hollywood.