Robert Downey Jr. biography

Synopsis

Family Life

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.

Early Roles

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.

Struggles with Substance Abuse

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.

Critical Successes

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.

In the wake of his critical success with Chaplin, Downey anchored a documentary about the 1992 presidential election, called The Last Party. He appeared in the romantic comedy Only You in 1994, and Oliver Stone's acclaimed but controversial Natural Born Killers (1994). In 1995, he starred in the period film Restoration alongside Meg Ryan and Sam Neill; an updated film version of Richard III (1995), co-starring Ian McKellen and Annette Bening; and the Jodie Foster-directed Home for the Holidays, co-starring Holly Hunter.

Personal Life and Challenges

Downey's personal life had expanded, too. In May 1992, he married actress Deborah Falconer. Two years later, the couple had a son, Indio, naming friend and actor, Anthony Michael Hall, as the boy's godfather.

If Downey was ever really grounded by his new status as husband and father, it was short-lived. In June 1996 the actor was stopped by police, driving naked in his Porsche on Sunset Boulevard, and found not only to be without clothes, but in possession of cocaine, heroine, and a .357 Magnum. Less than a month later, and just a few hours before he was slated to be charged, Downey ran afoul of the law again after he was found passed out in a neighbor's house.

For the next several years, Downey's life was a haze of headline-generating, dependency induced mistakes and their consequences. There was a 12-month stay in prison, and another visit to drug rehab. In November of 2000, Downey was again arrested, this time in a Palm Springs hotel room, where he was discovered with cocaine and a Wonder Woman costume. He was charged with felony drug possession.

Downey's trial, originally set for late January, was delayed for several months while his lawyers negotiated with prosecutors. In March of 2001, the two sides failed to reach a plea bargain, and the case was set for a preliminary hearing at the end of April. On April 24th, Downey was arrested for allegedly being under the influence of an undisclosed "stimulant." At home, Downey's personal life was in turmoil