In 2015, Robert Downey Jnr. is the face of Marvels billion dollar movie business, one of the most wildly popular actors in Hollywood and a name that can open a movie all on its own. That wasnt always the case, however: only a few years before he returned with a vengeance with Iron Man in 2008, Downey was literally unemployable. Downey claims to have been taking drugs since the age of eight years old, but it was his increasingly out-of-control drug abuse in the 1980s that began to see his promising movie career nosedive, and his life with it. The party boy junkie he played in 1987s Less Than Zero was a case of art imitating life imitating art imitating life. When he was arrested in 1996 for possession of heroin, cocaine and a very large gun, it marked the beginning of a spiral of arrests, rehab, jail time and more rehab, each incident more ludicrous than the last: including an arrest for breaking into his neighbours house and falling asleep in the bedroom. In 1999, Downey was sentenced to three years in a California state prison. When he received early release after a year inside, he was arrested for possession again within weeks and while on parole for that arrest, was arrested yet again. And nobody could hire him: one of the most naturally talented, charismatic and easy-on-the-eye actors in the Western world couldnt get the necessary insurance to work on a feature-length movie. It took his longtime friend Mel Gibson personally paying the massive insurance bond for him on The Singing Detective in 2002 to get him the gig. Woody Allen couldnt afford to do likewise the following year when he wanted to cast him in Melinda & Melinda. Finally, Joel Silver solved the RDJ problem in 2003 when he withheld 40% of Downeys salary for the schlocky ghost story Gothika until completion of the film a contractual stipulation that has since become the norm, allowing him to work on a regular basis. It was around that time that, stopping at a Burger King on the west coast for a bite to eat, he decided he was done with drugs at long last, and threw everything he had on him into the ocean.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
