Robert Downey Jr. was only six years old when he took the first step on his chaotic road to drug addiction and prison.
His father had seen him sipping white wine during a poker night at the family home in New York. But instead of quickly pulling the jar out of his young son’s hands, he handed him a cannabis joint and told him to puff instead. Such was cult filmmaker Robert Downey Sr.’s unorthodox approach to childcare.
Far less well known than his Hollywood star son — who overcame his demons to become the world’s highest-paid actor — Robert Downey Sr. was a headstrong director who was also a hopeless drug addict for much of his life.
Years later, he admitted he made “a horrible, stupid mistake” when he gave drugs to his six-year-old son. However, as a new documentary that took three years in the making shows, it was in keeping with a messy and irresponsible parenting style.
When he wasn’t giving his son narcotics, Downey Sr would take little Robert to watch X-rated films and even cast him – from the age of five – in his own disturbing and far from kid-friendly films. Life at home was “growing up in a family where everyone did drugs,” according to Downey Jr.
Downey Jr., the younger of two children, was born in Manhattan, New York City, in 1965 and originally grew up in the bohemian neighborhood of Greenwich Village, where he says he was “surrounded” by drugs at home
Is it any wonder, some might ask, that the future Iron Man star got so spectacularly off the rails?
That’s exactly the question he asks his ailing father in Sr., a new Netflix documentary the star has made about his tumultuous relationship with his father and his bizarre upbringing.
The film sheds a revealing new light on a deeply concerned but confident actor who told a judge in 1999 that he had been addicted since he was eight years old because his father gave him drugs. He added his addiction to cocaine and heroin is “like having a shotgun in my mouth and my finger on the trigger and I like the taste of gunmetal.”
In July 2021, Downey Sr. died of Parkinson’s disease at the age of 85. Though they show a deep affection for one another — and Downey Jr. avoids direct accusations — the role his father played in his devastating personal troubles is all too clear.
Referring to his somber upbringing, Downey Jr. says at one point, “I think we’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about his impact on me.”
His dad mumbles back in embarrassment, “Boy, I’d really like to miss that discussion.”
Downey Jr., the younger of two children, was born in Manhattan, New York City, in 1965 and originally grew up in the bohemian neighborhood of Greenwich Village, where he says he was “surrounded” by drugs at home.
Robert Downey Jr. was only six years old when he took the first step on his chaotic road to drug addiction and prison
His parents were 1960s counterculture underground filmmakers, and his mother, Elsie, appeared in everything her husband did – once playing all 12 female characters.
Though he influenced a generation of younger filmmakers, Downey Sr.’s films were never commercially successful and the family lived hand to mouth in a cramped converted attic.
His father claimed he made an adult bonkbuster, The Sweet Smell Of Sex, just to pay the medical bills for the boy’s birth.
Robert Jr was only five years old when he landed his first on-screen role. This was for a farcical comedy, Pound (1970) – in which the cast played stray dogs waiting to be euthanized. Downey Sr. did not usually take into account five-year-old Robert’s age in the only line he wrote for him. “Do you have hair on your balls?” the boy asks a bald man.
Two years later, a seven-year-old Downey Jr. appeared in another of his father’s deranged films, a Western called Greaser’s Palace. His throat was cut by a Christ-like preacher and he watched as his own mother – who also starred in the film – was brutally beaten.
The new documentary includes a snippet of a rare interview, apparently from the 1990s, in which Downey Sr. admits: “A lot of us thought it would be hypocritical not to let our kids have access to marijuana and things like that. It was an idiot move on our part to share this with our kids. I’m just glad he’s here.”
When asked if he’s ever worried his son – who looks next to him in the interview and looks clearly battered – might not survive, he replies: “Often.”
The family moved at least a dozen times — to London, New Mexico, Los Angeles and Connecticut — while parents pursued careers at the expense of their children’s education.
His parents were 1960s counterculture underground filmmakers, and his mother, Elsie, appeared in everything her husband did – once playing all 12 female characters
In LA, family friends like Jack Nicholson, Peter Sellers, and Alan Arkin regularly visited a home where, according to Downey Jr., cannabis was “a staple, like rice.”
Over time, the director’s cult following drew the attention of major Hollywood studios – and the family relocated to California so he could make a 1980 comedy called Up The Academy. This showed the outrageous antics of a group of misfits at a military school. It was a flop, but not before Downey Sr attempted to turn the main characters into ten-year-old children. The studio told him he was crazy.
“One guy said, ‘If you keep talking like that, we’re going to fire you and you’re not going to get the final cut no matter what,'” he recalls in the documentary. “I said, ‘Okay, as long as I get the last of the cocaine.'”
“And that was almost the end of me out there.”
His son interjects: ‘You don’t give a damn, do you?’
Eventually, Downey Jr. says, drug use was the only way his confused father was able to connect with him. “When my father and I did drugs together,” he explained in a 1988 interview, “it was like he was trying to express his love for me in the only way he knew how.”
His parents divorced in 1978 — when Robert was 13 — and he initially moved to Santa Monica, California, with his father.
In high school, his drug and alcohol problems escalated while partying with the Hollywood brat pack. His classmates there, including Sean Penn, Rob Lowe and Emilio Estevez, were already stars and Robert was keen to become one too.
He dropped out of school at 16 to pursue acting. At 18, he was forced to fend for himself when his father cut him off financially.
Downey Jr returned to New York to try his luck on stage. He quickly found not only work but also romance when – after an affair with future Oscar winner Marisa Tomei – he began a serious relationship with Sarah Jessica Parker, also 18, a few years from the Sex And The City star was removed.
They lived together for five years before Downey Jr.’s drug addiction destroyed their relationship.
By then, however, he had found his breakout role and was acting — what else? – a drug-addicted rich kid in the 1987 film Less Than Zero.
Roles flooded in, including one with Mel Gibson in the 1990 action-comedy Air America and an Oscar-nominated performance as Charlie Chaplin in 1992’s Chaplin. Downey Jr. married model Deborah Falconer in 1992 and they got one son, Indian.
Meanwhile, his father’s second wife, actress and writer Laura Ernst – whom he married in 1991 – proved to be his salvation. He gave up medication to take care of her when she was diagnosed with motor neuron disease. She died in 1994 at the age of 36.
“It was time to grow up and think of someone else first,” he admits.
But there was still no rescue for his son as his drug use and chaotic behavior only increased.
His father joked – with a certain cheek, given the circumstances – that he’d been keeping an eye on his son by reading the scandal-filled National Inquirer.
There was a lot to tell. In 1996, Downey Jr. was arrested for drunk speeding and possession of heroin, cocaine, crack cocaine and an unloaded gun. The following month, while he awaited trial, his neighbors called police after discovering Downey Jr. had wandered into their home in a drug haze and passed out on their 11-year-old son’s bed.
That same year, his wife Deborah finally gave up his drug use and left him. A judge ordered him to go to rehab. But he escaped, was recaptured and sent back, with Downey Jr. admitting to being “the poster child for pharmaceutical mismanagement.”
He repeatedly missed court-ordered drug tests and was on and off jail – twice waking up in a pool of his own blood after other inmates assaulted him – before a judge finally lost patience with the star’s justified arrogance and found him guilty in 1999 imprisoned for three years.
Even after he dropped out in 2000 and won a Golden Globe for his portrayal as Calista Flockhart’s boyfriend on the legal TV series Ally McBeal, he continued to get into trouble. Police found cocaine and methamphetamine in his hotel room and while on probation he was found barefoot and high in LA.
Fired from Ally McBeal, he went back into rehab. In 2003, he finally met producer Susan Levin on a film set. She told him she would marry him – which she did in 2005 – only if he promised to quit drugs for good.
He went into therapy with a 12-step program, started meditation and kung fu, and now says the most powerful drug he uses is caffeine.
His film career never looked back. In 2008, Downey Jr. was selected to play billionaire inventor Tony Stark aka Iron Man in the first of Marvel Comics’ highly successful Iron Man films. The actor, who was once making 8 cents an hour in prison scrubbing pans, has made £355million from the franchise.
It’s an amazing redemption story worthy of a Hollywood movie. The question is, would any of this have happened if Downey Sr. hadn’t given his six-year-old son that first cannabis joint all those years ago?