Long before being named Hollywood's highest earning actor, Robert Downey Jr was a washed-up drug addict who spent time in and out of prison.
The Ironman star raked in $80 million last year to take the crown as the best-paid actor in the business for the third year running, fending off competition from Jackie Chan ($50 million) and Vin Diesel ($47 million).
Following his performance in Sir Richard Attenborough’s 1992 biopic Chaplin, Downey Jr was described as the greatest actor of his generation. But instead of propelling himself onto the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the rising star pursued his love for drugs and guns. Inevitably, his decadence landed him in LA County jail, where he'd earn just eight cents an hour scrubbing pizza pans in the kitchen.
Throughout the 90s, Downey Jr's drug-fuelled behaviour was bizarre to say the least. Famously, in 1996, while roaring down Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard in a Porsche, he was arrested naked and hallucinating while reportedly possessing 97 different types of drugs and a handgun. Another time, he was found curled up in a foetal position in a rat-infested alleyway behind a grubby hotel in LA. And let us not forget the time he turned up for a meeting with British director Mike Figgis two hours late, barefoot and carrying a loaded shotgun. When asked why he was carrying the gun, he said he had absolutely no idea.
While in court facing a possession charge, Downey Jr told the judge that taking drugs was ‘like having a shotgun in my mouth with my finger on the trigger, and I like the taste of gun metal’.
In 1997, after missing repeated drugs tests, he was given a six month sentence for violating probation. While inside, the actor couldn't keep himself to himself and was caught fighting with another inmate. Due to the fact he was a celebrity, many of the inmates targeted him which led to him waking up in a pool of his own blood on two occasions.
Despite stints in prison and rehab, the Oscar nominee was sacked from TV series Ally McBeal in 2001 after being found wandering the streets barefoot and high on drugs. This relapse proved one-too-many for his wife Deborah Falcone, who walked out on the actor, taking their son with her.
It was in 2003 that the Iron Man star turned his life around when he fell in love with producer Susan Levin - she told him they would never marry unless he got sober for good. And, in suitably eccentric fashion, he pulled up outside a Burger King and theatrically threw all his drugs into the Pacific Ocean. He hasn't touched drugs since.
Within months of getting sober, Robert Downey Jr's reputation began growing again. And over 10 years later, it continues to grow as his career goes from strength to strength.
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น