Our Iron Man has a really interesting past and it clearly explains a lot of things. This post will make your jaws drop!
Robert Downey Jr. has faced many ups and down in his life, but, regardless of where he is at, he has always been one of the more interesting people in Hollywood. I mean, who doesn't love Robert Downey Jr? In 2014, he was revealed to be Hollywood’s highest paid actor, raking in a salary in the region of $75 million. He has won millions of hearts with his outstanding performances in all three Ironman movies, the Avengers, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Less than Zero, Sherlock Holmes, Gothika, Air America, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Due Date and many more movies as such. Here are 11 lesser-known facts about Robert Downey Jr.
While he was growing up, his family relocated a lot because of the nature of his father's work. He lived in New York, Connecticut, Woodstock, California, London, and Paris and that has definitely made him multicultural. When he was in London, he enrolled in Perry House School and studied classical ballet.
He released his debut album “The Futurist” in 2004 after he came out clean and sober, and permanently got rid of his drug addiction. Even though the album sales were not that great and it only sold 16,000 copies and ranked an unfortunate 121 on the Billboard Charts, the world still had the pleasure to see the other side of the amazing person.
He dropped out at the age of 17 from Santa Monica High School in California to pursue a future in acting. Later then, he moved to New York and struggled through part-time jobs while looking for an acting role. He performed in off-Broadway shows and was once hired as a piece of living art in a SoHo nightclub in New York City. He is actually a poster kid and stands as an example of the saying ‘hard work and dedication promise rewards’.
It is well-known that Robert Downey Jr. has had a long-standing battle with drug addiction, but his problems went out of control from 1996 to 2001, which resulted in multiple arrests imprisonments, and visits to the rehab. Because of his drug addiction, he was actually dismissed from the American legal comedy-drama television series ‘Ally McBeal’ after a drug arrest in 2000 and 2001. Later down the years, he did overcome his addiction and became sober and clean and attempted to rebuild his career in 2003. Since then, it has been nothing but immensely successful.
Back in 1992, he starred in Chaplin and it is still one of his best performances till the date. The biographical movie is about the life of celebrated British Comedian Charlie Chaplin. As a matter of fact, his performance was so good that the queen of the United Kingdom, Queen Elizabeth II was herself present at the London premiere of this performance in Leicester Square.
It has been reported a number of times that his father introduced him to the world of drugs when he was only eight years old. He offered him a joint and that is how he fell into the cycle of addiction. in 1999, he spent a year in jail, and prior to that in 1997, he spent four months in jail for drug possession. He was finally able to sober up and break the addiction in 2002, but he made multiple trips to rehabs and multiple arrests as well.
His father, Robert Downey Sr. was a movie director and his mother was an actress, so it's a given that acting runs in his veins. He first appeared as an on-screen puppy in his father’s film Pound in 1970. His father is both a writer and a director and gained an underground following in the ’60s. Coming from such an artistic family, it was almost impossible for Downey to do anything other than act since it acted as a major influence in his growing up.
He was almost named Robert Elias Jr. because Elias is his family name. His father was born in New York and got married to a model Elizabeth McLoughlin and he changed his family name permanently in the 1950s. It almost makes one wonder which direction his career would take if he was named Robert Elias Jr.
SJP and Downey Jr. first met each other at the set of Firstborn and back then, they were just 18 years old. They lived together for eight years and broke up in 1991. He has admitted on multiple occasions that his behavior was the major cause of their separation. In the 2008 Parade, he confirmed, saying, "I liked to drink, and I had a drug problem, and that didn’t jibe with Sarah Jessica because it is the furthest thing from what she is. She provided me a home and understanding. She tried to help me. She was so miffed when I didn’t get my act together."
Robert Downey Jr. was hired as a cast member in New York in 1985 and even though his stint at SNL was unsuccessful, he managed to perform 29 sketches, one of which the popular actor was cast as Tarzan.
Downey Jr. is a huge martial arts fan and spends a lot of time practicing Wing Chun. He started the Chinese martial arts in the early 2000s and says that because of practicing martial arts, he was about to kick his drug habit. In 2003, he had a sudden realization that he cannot lead his life this way and threw all of the drugs in his possession into the ocean.
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