♪♪
-Damn. -Good luck, keeping up.
-Robert Downey Jr.'s 2008 portrayal of Iron Man
helps Kickstart Marvel's $3 billion cinematic universe.
♪♪
-He's one of those actors
that there's an extra sprinkling of something special.
-But in the '90s, the actor has more in common
with the superheroes rich out of control alter ego.
-Robert's grown up in the public eye,
and Tony Stark, he's a guy who's also grown up in the public eye.
♪♪
-You've got all these gifts, but you're taking heroin.
-Downey's addictions to drugs and alcohol
nearly cost him everything...
-As far as Hollywood is concerned, he's toast.
-...Even his life.
-It's like I have a shotgun in my mouth,
and I've got my finger on the trigger,
and I like the taste of the gun metal.
♪♪
-I had a really serious sick love affair with cocaine.
And like a friend of mine who put it behind him said,
he calls cocaine "The Lady."
-In July of 2000, "NBC News" ventures
inside the California State Prison Center
where Charles Manson is locked up,
to interview an equally famous prisoner,
35-year-old Robert Downey Jr.
-And he said the only way you can respect The Lady
is to stop seeing her altogether.
-Downey, inmate number P50522,
is 12 months into his three-year sentence
for a litany of drug offenses,
including the possession of heroin and cocaine.
-And that was always difficult to me,
'cause, you know, breaking up is hard to do.
-And not even prison will split up Downey and The Lady.
But when he and drugs finally do call it quits,
he will embark on one of Hollywood's
most blockbuster comebacks,
finally achieving the professional acclaim
that seemed his birthright.
-And the Oscar goes to
Robert Downey Jr.!
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Born in Manhattan in April of 1965,
Downey Jr.'s mother Elsie is an actress.
And his father, Robert Downey Sr.,
an avant-garde independent filmmaker.
It's in one of his father's experimental films,
the 5-year-old Jr. gets his first acting role.
-His first on screen performance was in a film called "Pound."
It kind of sums up, I think,
his dad's slightly experimental background in
that it was a dog pound, but everyone was human.
So everyone was playing different dogs.
-Next morning, we go upstairs.
There's no more furniture, the roof's gone.
-His dad kind of put him in this film as a puppy.
-That tornado scared me so much,
it made my hair disappear.
-His first line was, "Have you got any hair on your balls?"
-Have any hair on your balls? [ Laughter ]
-I don't know if you're allowed to say that on -- on --
[ Laughing ] On Vice.
My name is Ben Falk, I'm an entertainment journalist
and film writer, and I'm also the author
of "Robert Danny Jr: The Fall and Rise of the Comeback Kid."
[ Funky music plays ]
-With this mom and dad, a part of New York's artsy
1960s counterculture scene,
Downey Jr. is there to witness at all.
-He was just absorbing all this stuff in.
Um, and when I say absorbing all that stuff in,
I mean, like, literally sucking in the pot smoke
because drugs were being done at home.
♪♪
-Downey Jr. says he was just a little kid
when his father first offers him a chance to smoke marijuana.
-His dad famously gave him his first joint.
His dad was like, "Yeah, take this. Who cares?
It's from the garden, it's fine."
The sort of story changes,
like, sometimes it's six, sometimes it's eight,
sometimes it's seven, but certainly, um,
around six, seven, eight, he was already smoking pot.
I'm not a trained psychologist,
but it was kind of inevitable, I think, actually,
that he'd end up getting embroiled in that world
because it was normalized, uh, right from the very beginning.
-An actual trained doctor, an addiction specialist says
nothing is inevitable.
But being exposed to drugs at an early age can be problematic.
-To give a child alcohol
or weed...
you can throw the switch on the predisposed very easily.
My name is Dr. Drew Pinsky.
In the '90s, I was doing a radio show
called "Love Line,"
but really the vast majority of my time
was spent running a large addiction recovery program
in a psychiatric hospital.
If you're exposed young, your risk of addiction,
if you have the genetic background, begins to skyrocket.
-Downey Jr.'s genetic background comes through
his father, a lifelong addict.
Downey Sr.'s drug issues contribute to a divorce in 1978.
After his dad relocates to Los Angeles,
Downey Jr. follows him out to Hollywood.
-Robert Downey Jr. went to Santa Monica High School.
I'm Michael Fleeman and in the 1990s,
I was an entertainment reporter.
It's a public school, Santa Monica,
west side of Los Angeles
that had so many famous young actors
who would go on to become huge.
-Some of Downey's classmates include Rob Lowe,
Charlie Sheen, and Sean Penn.
-Santa Monica High had a lot of drug kind of culture
there was definitely coke kicking about.
-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 "Firstborn."
Also in the movie is future star of "Sex and the City,"
Sarah Jessica Parker.
Downey and Parker, are seen dating.
-She was this cool, very focused actress,
and he was pretty much the opposite.
The relationship happened really quickly.
It kind of spiraled really, really fast into, like,
being a quite serious relationship.
-While dating Parker, Downey lands another
mean kid role in "Weird Science."
-Rumor has it, there's a big white sale going on.
-At Towel World! -Towel World.
[ Both laugh ]
-The movie's directed by John Hughes,
the man responsible for Brat Pack movies
like "The Breakfast Club" and "Pretty and Pink."
-Even though he was in a John Hughes film,
Downey, I don't think you could ever call him
part of the Brat Pack.
He wasn't kind of one of the main
body of that group.
-After "Weird Science," Downey gets hired
by "Saturday Night Live" creator Lorne Michaels,
who, after quitting the show in 1980,
returns to run "SNL" five years later.
-Lorne Michaels was trying to resurrect "Saturday Night Live."
And his idea was, let's bring in a load of young people
because we need to bring in some fresh new blood.
-The one aspect of working on "SNL"
lives on from the heyday of Belushi and Chase.
-Just the sheer kind of grind
of what "Saturday Night Live" is,
it being crazy and drugs kicking around.
Um, we're still there.
-Downey fully embraces that legacy.
And is out most nights enjoying New York's
drug-fueled club scene.
-Everybody knew he was part of a fast living crowd.
Everybody knew he was in the party scene.
But there was never a sense that it had gotten out of control.
He didn't miss work.
-Despite his work ethic,
the 11th season of "Saturday Night Live"
is considered one of the weakest in the show's 50 year history.
And Downey, like many others,
is not invited back for another season.
-You'll-- Ow!
[ Laughter ]
Hey.
-It will take two years before Downey
lands what many consider his breakout role.
-Check me out. I'm gonna make a serious comeback.
-Great.
"Less Than Zero."
-A big role for Robert Downey Jr.
was playing this character, Julian,
who is a drug addict who, by the end of the film,
goes through an awful lot of horrible stuff
in pursuit of drugs and because of drugs.
I genuinely think it's one of the best films that he made.
-Not here! We talked about this.
"Less Than Zero" shows his best qualities.
It shows a scene stealing actor who every time he's on screen,
your eyes are magnetically drawn to him.
-Always a pleasure.
-And particularly in when he's going through that
kind of pain, you really feel that pain
right down to your marrow.
-Looking back, it's easy to question
whether Downey's performance as Julian
is a case of life imitating art.
Or the other way around.
-He would sort of say that
he wasn't experientially performing that role.
But I think a lot of people who watched that film
would say otherwise. -All you have to do is relax.
I'm gonna pay you back. All you need to do is trust me.
-I don't want to trust you, Julian.
I just want my $50K, all right?
-He certainly channeled a lot of his life
and his demons into that role.
Julian in "Less Than Zero,"
is What Robert Downey Jr. was about to become.
-[Bleep] up.
-In the late '80s, Robert Downey Jr.'s
compelling performance
as a desperate drug addict
in "Less Than Zero"
makes him one of Hollywood's
most talked about young actors.
But there's one person who knows the line between Downey
acting like a drug addict and being one
is more than just blurred.
Downey's manager, Loree Rodkin
forces him to take his first trip to rehab.
But Rodkin learns no good deed goes unpunished.
Downey pushes her out while clinging to his drug habit.
-Your survival system is taken over
by the pursuit of a chemical.
It's extremely powerful, and it distorts everything else,
thinking, emotions, interpersonal conduct.
It -- It distorts all that
and serves the one god of pursuing the substance.
-But at this point, Downey substance abuse
has yet to interfere with his on screen performances.
-Anything anywhere, anytime.
That's our motto. Well, it would be.
-If we actually existed. -That's right.
-Downey opens the '90s by being cast
in the action comedy "Air America,"
alongside another actor with a history of addiction,
Mel Gibson.
♪♪
Like Downey, Gibson starts drinking young,
and by the time of "Air America,"
Gibson already has a DUI in Canada.
♪♪
-Mel Gibson had some issues, um, in terms of
substance addiction and stuff like that.
And so, I think, actually,
there's a slight kind of older brother,
younger brother relationship there.
I think Robert Downey Jr. sees a lot of himself in Mel Gibson.
-During shooting, Downey and Gibson
grow into real world friends,
not drinking buddies.
-When he shot initially with Mel
back for "Air America," he was clean.
-Why are they shooting at us?
-'Cause they're unfriendly.
-Why is everyone so unfriendly?
-Well, they haven't got to know us yet.
-You know, he was actually on one of his kind of dry runs.
-But that ends after "Air America" wraps.
Downey is soon back out to late nights
of drug-induced partying,
which now includes not just snorting,
but also smoking cocaine.
-He was someone who was able to kind of
have this incredible constitution
and just being out at, like, the China Club one night,
being out at the Roxbury another night,
being out the Hollywood Canteen the next night,
and then still managing to work the next day,
which is remarkable, actually.
There were very -- There seemed to be
very few people that can do that,
maybe him and Keith Richards.
-But Downey's drugs and Rock and roll lifestyle
is taking its toll on his relationship
with Sarah Jessica Parker.
-I think what was strange as well about this relationship
between, uh, Downey and Parker
was that she was the most straitlaced person
you could ever imagine.
The idea of drugs for Sarah Jessica Parker
was just completely anathema.
Like, that wasn't part of her life.
-Parker's career is going strong.
Having demonstrated her comedic skills
playing opposite Steve Martin
in the romantic comedy "L.A. Story."
But her real life romance with the hard partying Downey
is fast becoming the kind of L.A. story that ends badly
for the sober side of the couple.
-She deeply, deeply loved him, you know, they were going to --
you could sense they were going to get married at some point,
um, until the drugs kind of broke it apart.
I think that's where partners of his
have thought -- they've thought that they can fix him.
They've thought that this is someone that can,
you know, he's ready to change.
-You can't save an addict. You can't.
And when you're with somebody,
you -- everybody wants them to get better,
wants to do something to help them.
It's very, very painful.
The family, the loved ones
suffer more than the patient,
because the patient's loaded.
-In 1991, after seven years together,
Parker breaks it off with Downey.
-She tried and she tried and she tried,
and there was lying, and there was apologies
and all this kind of stuff, and eventually,
just living with someone with that disease
is just proved too much for her.
-Less than a year after the breakup,
Downey starts dating someone who can keep up
with his appetite for alcohol and hard drugs.
Singer actress Deborah Falconer.
-Deborah had some of her own issues,
and they were enjoying the night life
and the kind of partying aspect of Hollywood, too.
They met,
they fell in love very, very quickly,
and within just, like, just after a month,
actually, um, they were married.
-At the same time, Downey is just wrapping up
filming the role that will define him
as an actor for decades.
-You can't be Chaplain.
-Downey's total embodiment of Charlie Chaplin
mesmerizes audiences, along with fellow actors and directors.
-I loved him in "Chaplin."
-He's so there and present and in the moment,
If you play tennis with a good player,
you're going to play better.
-Some actors pick up a script,
they read they read the lines that they're supposed to say.
And nine times out of ten,
they'll do similar things with the words,
with the lines, with the intention.
When Robert Downey Jr. gave you a line reading,
it was, like, more different than anybody
ever would have approached it, you know?
-Both Michael Schultz and Gail O'Grady will not work
with Downey until years later on the TV series, "Ally McBeal."
But like the rest of Hollywood in 1992,
they're witnessing the rise of a major talent
when the industry recognizes at the 65th Academy Awards.
-Best Actor nominee for his brilliant work in
"Chaplain," Robert Downey Jr.
-Although he loses to Al Pacino for his role in
"Scent of a Woman"...
-I'm just getting warmed up.
-...Downey is also just getting warmed up.
Over the next year, he wins Britain's version
of the Academy Award.
His first son, Indio was born,
and Downey delivers scene-stealing moments
in some of the decades most artistic films,
including Robert Altman's "Short Cuts,"
and Oliver Stone's, "Natural Born Killers."
-Wait, wait, wait. Time, cut, cut, cut.
Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.
That's a [bleep] joke, right?
-But these visible successes mask something hidden away
inside Downey that leads him to begin using
an even more addicting drug.
-Robert had been, you know, he'd been doing drugs
for a long time by 1995.
Coke, weed, drinking everything.
But actually, 1995 was the sort of moment
when he did heroin for the first time.
-The type of heroin Downey is using is black tar,
a crude variant popular in the '90s,
that's also known as Black Dragon.
-Black tar heroin was readily available,
sort of good source of heroin,
cheap, uh, and that's what was being shot.
-Downey will later admit that smoking heroin is
why his performances are so subdued in the films
that he made at the time.
Something that did not go unnoticed by his peers.
-He was doing "Home for the Holidays" at the time.
So he was making this movie which Jody Foster was directing.
And Jodie Foster remembers writing this letter to him,
just saying, "Don't do this," basically.
Like, "You've got all these gifts. You've got this ability.
You could do anything you want in this town.
But you're taking heroin, you're ruining it.
You're giving yourself an opportunity
to destroy everything that you've built."
He didn't listen to her, he was in the throes of
heavy addiction by that point.
So he wasn't ready to listen to anybody.
♪♪
-The first time I knew about serious trouble
involving Robert Downey Jr.
was when my editor said that Downey had been arrested.
-Downey gets pulled over for driving 70 miles per hour
on the winding Pacific Coast Highway, just outside of Malibu.
-He's pulled over for speeding,
for suspected driving under the influence.
Cop finds cocaine,
finds heroin, and finds a 357 magnum.
-What starts with a cop pulling him over
will lead to a judge throwing in the book
and will deliver Robert Downey Jr.
to the brink of self destruction.
-Things are going from bad to worse.
-By 1996, Robert Downey Jr. is no longer
a Hollywood bad boy.
He's now being cast as a man
whose life is dangerously out of control.
-At this point, uh,
he is possibly a danger to himself and to the community,
if and when he drives under the influence.
-Suddenly, he's light in the full view of the world's press
as someone who was caught with all these drugs
under the influence and with a gun.
-The DUI drug and gun possession charges,
put a somber and contrite looking Downey
in front of a judge.
-After that first court appearance,
Robert Downey Jr. doesn't go off to jail.
He doesn't go off to prison. He's essentially out on bail.
So another court hearing is set.
And he is let go.
-It leaves him free to continue smoking heroin
and freebasing cocaine on a near daily basis.
-When Robert Downey Jr. is left to his own devices,
he finds trouble.
And in this case, God bless him,
it was the weirdest kind of trouble you can imagine.
-Just a month after the first court appearance,
police receive a 911 call
from Downey's neighbor in Malibu.
-[ Snoring ]
-His neighbor goes into the child's bedroom,
and who is asleep in the kids room,
but Robert Downey Jr.
-They were just putting one of the kids to bed,
and they found a lump in the bed.
And it was Downey Jr. who had walked into the wrong house
and had climbed into this child's bed.
-Snoozing away.
-Media quickly labeled this latest chapter
in the Downey saga the "Goldilocks Incident."
-You know, who's sleeping in my bed?
-The neighbor calls 911 and says, you know,
"You're not going to believe this, but Robert Downey Jr.
is asleep in my kid's bed.
-Even in Hollywood, this is strange.
And you listen to the 911 call,
you can literally hear Robert Downey Jr. snoring
in the background.
-He said the cab took him to the wrong house.
I don't think that's true, really.
I think it was just too much drinking, too much drugs,
and "I want to go home, I don't want to go to bed."
-So, of course, everyone's joking about it.
"Oh, Robert Downey Jr. broke into somebody's house,
fell asleep in the bed, ha ha."
-Luckily, Downey's neighbors don't press charges,
but the incident still makes headlines.
And even worse, it violates the probation of his first DUI.
-After the Goldilocks Incident,
it -- it became this kind of nonstop trail of ---
of one court date after another.
He's missing court-mandated drug tests,
uh, he's continually screwing up.
-Months later in 1996,
the court orders Downey to attend a treatment center
in Marina Del Rey.
But it lacks the one thing Downey craves.
More drugs.
The moment he gets into this rehab,
he's already looking at ways that he can get away.
So, you know, he figures out a way
a window to climb out of.
-He's wearing his hospital pants
and a Hawaiian shirt and slippers,
and he sneaks out into the night.
-He kind of stumbles his way into a surf shop nearby.
The people recognize him in the surf shop
and call him a cab, and he's away.
-It just again, you want to kind of laugh about it.
It's a comic scene, perhaps, but at the same time,
it's like, my God, you know,
is this how badly you want those drugs
that you just can't even spend two days in rehab?
-Downey tries to play his addictions for laughs
when he returns to "Saturday Night Live"
as a guest host that November.
-I did have a really interesting summer, though.
Here's me picking up a little prescription from my pharmacist.
Uh, this next one is of me when I stayed at this
terrific guest house in Malibu.
It was actually two doors down from my own house, but you know.
-But if laughter is the great healer,
it doesn't work on Downey,
who shows no intention of sobering up.
-He wasn't ready to go through that,
even though people were starting to say, "Look, man,
like, things are going off the rails big time here.
Like you're struggling. Something needs to change."
He -- He just wasn't ready to accept it.
-One person who is ready for a change is Downey's wife,
Deborah Falconer.
She serves him with separation papers.
-I think there was a lot of relationship issues
and personal issues that were starting to press on him.
-After another DUI and drug possession charge,
along with his multiple probation violations,
the Malibu judge Lawrence Mira tries to scare Downey straight.
-The judge says, "Look, I-I just have no choice here.
You know, I'm running out of patience,
I'm running out of options.
And the judge throws Downey in jail.
In jail for 113 days.
-Downey gets sent to the L.A. County Central Men's jail,
home to violent offenders and rat-infested cells.
Unlike the other prisoners, however,
the judge lets Downey leave the jail
to act in a movie.
But getting chauffeured by sheriff deputies
to Paramount Studios doesn't sit well
with Downey's fellow inmates.
-If they see another inmate getting special treatment,
this makes it more difficult
for us to control their behavior
in a jail institutional setting.
-It's a lesson Downey learns the hard way.
-Downey got attacked.
He got his face bashed in,
and it was so serious that, you know,
he had to have medical attention
and even plastic surgery to kind of fix his nose.
So yes, it was a very, very rough stretch in County jail.
-After his release, Downey looks for work in movies.
Any movies to help finance his continuing addiction.
-And the problem is is that he was still
a kind of semi-successful movie star at the time.
So he was still doing these films.
-Deputy, get me out of these cuts right now.
-It's a problem because Downey's ability
to keep working may be stopping him from getting clean.
-My experience has been that returning to work
and not prioritizing the recovery
is what takes them out.
You can stop the revolving door of rehab
by spending enough time in treatment.
And that's what celebrities need to do.
-By 1999, no matter how much compassion
anybody has for Robert Downey Jr.,
It's run out.
-After failing to show up for his mandatory drug test
and with more parole violations since leaving County Jail,
Downey is back in front of Judge Mira.
This time, armed with a team of celebrity lawyers,
including Robert Shapiro,
best known for successfully co-defending OJ Simpson.
-Robert Downey Jr. is led into court.
He's in an orange jump suit.
His hands are shackled.
You would have thought he's been treated like a serial killer.
-In front of a media packed court room,
Downey pleads his case.
-And that's when he makes the famous line about the gun
in his mouth, his finger on the trigger.
-It's like I have a shotgun in my mouth,
and I've got my finger on the trigger,
and I like the taste of the gun metal.
-It's his way of explaining
that he's not just addicted to the drugs,
but he's addicted to the danger.
-But this is no court room drama,
and Mira isn't an actor playing a part.
He's a judge who's seen enough of Downey's performance.
-The judge just threw up his hands and said,
"Look, Mr. Downey..."
-"I don't think we have any alternatives here.
We have used them all."
-"I have to send you to state prison.
And not just to prison, I go to send you to prison
for three years."
There was a stunned silence.
He didn't seem to understand why he was sitting there in court
facing prison time,
going off to the same prison holding Charles Manson.
-I'm living my dreams. -In July of 2000,
already 12 months into his three year sentence,
a not especially contrite Robert Downey Jr.
gives an interview to "NBC news"
from his cell block in California's
Corcoran State prison.
-Party! Hey, smile.
You're on Corcoran camera.
No, I'm sorry, go ahead.
-Despite his manic energy, Downey not doing easy time.
-This is not a country club.
It's out in the middle of nowhere,
it is surrounded by fences and razor wire,
and there are guards with guns.
These are, you know,
tough criminals, even in the minimum
to moderate security wing,
and just on the other side of the fence
is the high security part.
That's where Charles Manson is.
That's where serial killers are.
-Prison culture is really, uh, something
that's hard to explain.
But...
It's opened my eyes to a lot.
-For somebody who has arguably not hurt
another person except himself, this is hard time.
-I'm just, uh -- I'm just waiting to do the next --
next right thing.
I know I'm not doing it my way when I leave.
-He's in a dorm-like setting.
He gets the top bunk because nobody wants the top bunk.
He also has to deal with the fact that he's famous.
-Unlike his stint in the L.A. County jail,
Downey gets no days off to shoot a movie.
-I've taken it upon myself to, uh, see that,
if anything, I get slightly less preferential treatment,
'cause sometimes even just having things even
would seem not fair.
-Downey proves to be a model prisoner,
and the courts decide to release him
after he served 15 months of his sentence.
-He does manage to get released from Corcoran
a little bit earlier and kind of adjourns to another rehab.
And this is his kind of one big shot
it feels like to change his life completely,
and you would have thought he would.
-He's stayed clean, he's gone to his classes.
He's done his counseling,
and he immediately gets a job on a show called "Ally McBeal."
-I have a child.
[ Cartoons play on TV ]
-What? -When Robert Downey Jr.
was added to the cast,
he was just recently out of prison,
but nobody cared about that.
-He's seven years old.
[ TV turns off ]
-Why didn't you tell me this before?
-Everybody was elated. They were excited.
My name is Michael Schultz.
I'm a director who happened to be lucky enough
to work with Robert Downey Jr.
for a brief moment in "Ally McBeal."
-Created by David E. Kelley
and starring Calista Flockhart,
"Ally McBeal's" in it's fourth season
when Downey becomes her new love interest,
playing a man with a complicated past
and deep commitment issues.
-Merry Christmas. -Everybody loved
his creative genius.
And so it was like a spark plug.
-Downey injects life into the latter part
of this, uh -- this -- the run of this show.
-Gail O'Grady gets cast to play Downey's ex-wife on the show.
-We did a scene where we were in an ice cream parlor
and I was putting whipped cream on the end of his nose
and Calista walks in and gets jealous
and dumps a whole ice cream sundae on his head.
-Are you done? -Mm-hmm.
-Good. -We did it a few times.
We definitely did it more than once.
And Robert's a good sport.
♪♪
I'm Gail O'Grady
Once upon a time, I got to play
Robert Downey Jr.'s ex-wife...
Hello. -Hi.
-...On "Ally McBeal."
Working with Robert, like, every once in a while,
you come across actors
that transport you into another place.
-While Downey's performance helps bolster
the show's ratings, working so soon
after prison isn't helping Downey stay sober.
Something Dr. Drew sees all too often
with celebrity patients.
-They need to not work.
They need to focus on their recovery.
He went back and did television
and then relapsed immediately after that.
-And by that Thanksgiving,
three months after his release from prison,
he gets arrested again for drug possession
at a resort in Palm Springs.
-The officers were able to search the room.
Uh, during the search, they found a small amount
of methamphetamine and cocaine,
uh, which was consistent with personal use amounts.
-Even though everyone would think
that coming out of Corcoran and you'd go, "You know what?
I'm turning over a new leaf, that's not me anymore."
That pretty much was him continuing on.
Like, he didn't change all that much.
-Downey's court date for the arrest
gets set for the following spring,
and if convicted, would be sent back to prison
for four more years.
But professionally, David Kelley
is willing to let the incident slide
because the drugs have yet to interfere
with his performance set.
In fact, they sign him on for eight more episodes.
-David Kelley chose to keep Robert Downey
because he -- he loved him.
He loved him as an actor, you know?
And when Robert was on the set it was all about the work.
He was totally into character.
He was totally focused.
-I know that he showed up on that set and did his work.
And he was professional.
He's one of those actors that when you stand across from him,
there's an extra sprinkling of something special.
-That extra sprinkle earns Downey a Golden Globe Award
for his performance on the show in January 2001.
-Hi. Thanks.
I just wanted to, uh, share this with my fellow parolees,
I mean, nominees.
And just say that this really means a lot.
[ Applause ]
-The award is bittersweet.
Just two days later, Downey receives divorce papers
from Deborah Falconer,
who's demanding that the actor be allowed
only supervised visits with their son.
And Downey's relapses become more frequent and more obvious.
-I'd come to work and Robert is supposed to be,
uh, in my first scene.
Then my AD comes and says,
"We can't find Robert.
We sent somebody over to his house.
He's not in his house. He's M.I.A."
-Just a few months after the Golden Globes
in April of 2001,
Robert Downey Jr. is arrested again.
He's wandering the streets of Culver City,
barefooted on drugs.
♪♪
And, professionally, that's it. Okay?
The people at "Ally McBeal" gave him another chance,
he won them a Golden Globe, he helped their ratings,
but he's got a few episodes left to shoot, and that's it.
They just -- They just can't.
-Downey's character is supposed to marry "Ally McBeal"
in the season finale.
-Instead, David Kelley
has no choice but to fire him.
-Because of his relapse,
they had to figure a way to write him out of the series,
and it ended pretty abruptly.
-He dropped off a note.
-I think David was really saddened
and Calista was brokenhearted, you know,
that, um,
he was not going to be able to complete the show.
-Robert Downey Jr. does avoid more prison time
as long as he goes back into rehab,
but in April of 2001,
despite his immense talent,
it is financially impossible to hire him.
As far as Hollywood is concerned, he's toast.
-In July of 2001,
California's proposition 36
diverts non-violent drug offenders
into rehab instead of prison.
It essentially decriminalizes drug possession
when it's for personal use.
The change in law saves Downey from another stint behind bars.
But when it comes to acting,
there's not an insurance company in America
that will let Downey step onto another movie set.
-People still wanted to work with him,
but the insurance companies just said no. Like, no.
It's not just that they wouldn't insure Downey,
they wouldn't insure a show that he was working on.
-In the language of addiction,
Downey has finally hit rock bottom.
-His marriage has collapsed.
He is broke, and he has no way to make a living.
-But it's his forced unemployment
that may help save Downey.
He finally has nothing but time to focus on his sobriety.
-The most vivid memory I have of Robert Downey Jr.
is when he was getting very serious about his recovery.
And he disappeared. He finally got the message.
He focused on his recovery.
-And he stays sober and he passes the drug tests.
And he impresses the judge and the prosecutors and everybody
he has to impress.
He's clean for maybe the first time
in a long time.
So the only question is, will he get a job?
What he needed was a guardian angel who would believe in him,
and he found that person in Mel Gibson.
-In 2003,
when no one else will,
his old co-star from "Air America"
offers Downey the lead role in a film called
"The Singing Detective."
[ Gunshots ]
[ Woman screams ]
To get around the insurance company's boycott
of Downey, Gibson personally underwrites the movie
with his own money.
-Now, remember he's richer than God,
but Gibson himself covered the insurance costs.
He vouched for Downey to show up.
-Despite the film's mostly negative reviews by critics,
Gibson's generosity resuscitates Downey's career
by giving Downey the chance to win over the only audience
that really matters.
The insurance companies.
-He reproved to Hollywood
that he was a brilliant actor
who can transcend even mediocre material.
-I'm here, to help you, but you have to trust me.
-That same year, he appears opposite Halle Berry
in the psychological horror flick "Gothika."
-On that set, he met and fell in love with
the love of his life.
-Susan Levin is a producer on the film.
In 2003, when they start dating,
she has one simple stipulation.
-She said quite early on, like,
"If you do drugs, I will break up with you."
And I think the fantastic thing for --
for their relationship is that he was ready to hear it.
He was finally ready to understand what that meant.
He realized he'd found someone special.
And it's been a relationship now that's lasted 20 years.
I mean, in Hollywood terms, that's practically a lifetime.
-Two years after getting remarried,
Downey lands the role that transforms him
from an award-winning actor
into a global superstar.
-Let's face it, this is not the worst thing
you've got me doing. -I think what makes
Iron Man and Robert Downey Jr.
such a good marriage of material and person
is that this is someone who actually is quite similar.
-Robert's grown up in the public eye.
Everything good and bad that's happened in his life,
everybody's seen.
And Tony Stark, he's a guy
who's also grown up in the public eye.
-Iron Man in the comics is an alcoholic.
He's someone who's kind of glib and silly and funny.
He's not a kind of serious superhero.
And that's not what Robert Downey Jr. is either.
He's someone who's loud, funny, quirky,
and also has these substance abuse issues in the past.
-"Iron Man" is the first movie
and what will become Marvel's
$30 billion cinematic universe.
And as the face of that franchise,
it makes Downey one of the richest actors on the planet.
-What makes Robert Downey Jr.'s life so interesting
is things happened off camera,
on camera, we see it, you know, in only snippets.
And I think that makes it more mysterious.
That makes it more kind of exciting to dig into.
-We're just having fun and getting started.
-And Downey finally digs deeper into his own life
when he produces a documentary
called "Senior" about his complex relationship
with his father who's dying from Parkinson's disease
during its filming in 2020.
-There's a scene when he's going up to see his father
in the apartment, and, you know, his dad's dying.
And Downey's just like a father's son.
You know, he's not a superstar.
He's concerned about his dad
still working out a lifetime
of issues, but there for his father.
-The documentary also gives his father an opportunity
to acknowledge how that early exposure to drugs
affected his son's entire life.
-His father did regret later on, I think, you know,
there was an idea that his dad was like,
"Yeah, take this. Who cares?"
But, actually, later on in his life,
um, his dad did express a lot of regret for that
and realized that it was kind of a bad thing to do.
-I thought it was cute to let him smoke it, and all that.
It was an idiot move on our part, the lot of us.
To share that with our children.
I'm just happy he's here.
-[ Chuckles ] -That's all.
-In 2021, Downey's father dies at the age of 85.
But he leaves behind a son who was finally coming to his own
and whose self-sabotaging days seem very much behind him.
With this best supporting actor win at the 2024 Oscars,
Downey, now sober for 22 years,
is finally recognized for the talent
he spent the first two decades of his life
drowning out with drugs.
-I'd like to thank my terrible childhood
and the academy in that order.
-Robert Downey Jr. is the ultimate redemption story.
Nobody has fallen so far
and been so low
and come back so big
than Robert Downey Jr.
-Robert is truly an inspiration.
He's one of the most extraordinary recoveries
you could possibly imagine, and he continues to inspire others.
He is humble in recovering.
He's -- He's a model for how this should be done.
It gives everyone hope.
-There are these kind of different waves
of Downey Jr.
Certainly, from a kind of hero's journey, he is one for the ages,
like, he's someone who seemed destined for greatness
from a very early age.
And then it all seems to come unraveled.
Like, you could never see any way back from where he was.
And yet, somehow, he's managed to claw his way back
into the public consciousness and become one of
the biggest actors of all time.
-The genius is so unstoppable
that he rose from the ashes
and became this superstar.
-He's a good person,
and he just gets better,
like fine wine.
And I think that's why we wanted him to succeed.
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪