Robert Downey Jr. debuted at five playing a sick puppy
Robert Downey Jr. first appeared on screen aged five as an ailing puppy in his father's absurdist film Pound. Decades, several arrests and one superhero later, his leading roles had grossed more than $14.3 billion, and he was the world's best-paid actor three years running.
He was born in Manhattan on April 4, 1965, to the filmmaker Robert Downey Sr. and the actress Elsie Ann Ford. His father's projects kept the family on the move, from Woodstock to London to New Mexico. Drugs were part of home life early: his father, who struggled with addiction, gave him marijuana at six or eight, something he later regretted, and his mother fought alcoholism. After his parents divorced when he was twelve he lived with his mother, and he dropped out of Santa Monica High School in 1982.
Clearing restaurant tables and working in a shoe shop to pay his way through auditions, he picked up theatre work and a first credited film role in 1983, though most of his scenes were cut. Playing a bully in John Hughes's Weird Science (1985) was his breakthrough and linked him with the Brat Pack. He spent a single season in the Saturday Night Live cast before most of the new recruits were let go. His turn as a rich boy sliding into addiction in Less than Zero (1987) drew praise from Roger Ebert, and soon afterwards he began a decade of rehab stints that ended in a 1996 arrest.
Even then the work was remarkable. For Chaplin (1992) he learned violin and left-handed tennis and won the BAFTA for Best Actor plus an Oscar nomination. After less than a year in a treatment facility he joined Ally McBeal in 2000 and won a Golden Globe, only to be fired in 2001 after more drug arrests. Court-ordered rehab followed, and he has been sober since 2003.
The comeback was spectacular. From 2008 he played Tony Stark in ten Marvel films, earned a second Oscar nomination the same year for Tropic Thunder, and was the highest-paid actor on Earth from 2013 to 2015. His portrayal of the bureaucrat Lewis Strauss in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer (2023) finally brought the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and in 2024 he made his Broadway debut in Ayad Akhtar's McNeal.
Source: Robert Downey Jr.
