Institute for RDJ Studies ❱ Reading List
Irrepressible, Irresistible Robert Downey Jr
Cosmopolitan, March 1995, by Nancy Mills
Billy Zane's game room buzzed as the after-dinner ping pong match reached its climax. The wives were out of sight in the next room, snapping polaroids of each other, while the men were glued to Robert Downey Jr versus Tom Cruise. Short and speedy but packing some extra poundage, Downey was doing a lot of futile stretching while his taller, rangier opponent placed smash after smash behind him. Cruise wins! 21-4! The wives look up as Downey runs out of the game room, past them and through the far door, leaving it open. The next minute he's whizzing through again, heading back into the game room at warp speed. Crash! Cheers. Groans. Downey had attempted to leap over the net, over the whole table, in fact, to congratulate the winner. He didn't quite make it, and the table disintegrated in splinters.
"I definitely put an exclamation point on the evening," Downey says a few days later. He recalls the moment with just a tinge of regret. "But I think Tom was pretty impressed with how I collapsed that table." Downey can't leave the memory alone. "Later, I was thinking: Robert, maybe you shouldn't have jumped the net. Maybe that was childish. you're going to be thirty in April. Wouldn't it have been enough if you'd just sat quietly in the corner? Would you have been considered any less charming?" Downey, the irrepressible motormouth, ponders this for about half a second. "No, I wasn't doing it for them. I jumped the net because I still like breaking things."
That's Downey all over—an entertainingly childish man on the cusp of greatness. He confesses to petty larceny as a teen and drug use later, and today seems like a Peter Pan who knows he must grow up but keeps putting off the moment. Adulthood? "It's not that I've moved there yet, but I have visited it," he says. Downey's semi-maturity comes wrapped in sophisticated patter. He lacks the good sense to be dull. As someone who can list just one inhibition—"Sometimes I don't like dancing so much"—he understands perfectly well why he's on everybody's party list. What he can't comprehend is his position as one of the leading actors of his generation, with over two dozen films and one Academy Award nomination for Best Actor (Chaplin) already crowding his bio. From Less Than Zero, in which he played a charming drug addict, to Restoration, where he portrays a physician in the Court of King Charles II, Downey has blazed—or is it breezed?—through a career that would be called Promises, Promises, if it were a musical. Now, as a married man with an 18-month old son, Indio, he's going to get serious about realizing his potential—or at least, he's thinking about it. One major omen: He's just signed to play Holly Hunter's brother in Home for the Holidays, to be directed by Jodie Foster. "It's not that I feel pressure," he says in this odd way he has of backing into distasteful subjects, "but I feel the stage has been set for me to give a lot more than I have given."
Maybe tomorrow. But today, sitting in Ivy at the Shore, a popular Santa Monica restaurant, he would rather binge on crab cakes, onion rings, bread, and tandoori chicken. The food disappears rapidly, washed down with many glasses of iced tea. Away from the structure of work, Downey resembles an extra-large toddler, with a two-day growth. His almost-combed brown hair falls nearly to his shoulders. He's wearing white trousers and a white t-shirt decorated with three large crowns. "I look like I was poured out of a cement mixer," Downey half-apologizes. "I used to be into clothes, but I've lost the desire to spend an extra six minutes deciding what belt would look great with what shoes. I'm like, Wait a minute, will these pants be comfortable after I eat? The answer is no." Like a little boy showing off a favorite toy, he pulls up his t-shirt to reveal his slightly expansive stomach. "These are the wrong pants, but the ones I wanted to wear had stains all over them," he explains, with the pride of a puppy who just discovered newspaper. "I opted for cleanliness over comfort." Well, that's one tiny step toward adulthood. Downey picks up a piece of bread and begins playing with it as if it were Silly Putty. Before long, he has molded it into a golf tee. Then, with a few deft squeezes, he shapes it into an elephant's leg and walks it around the tablecloth. Later, he invents a wheel. "I like tearing stuff up," he says, "particularly if I don't have to clean it up." Downey's pal, Billy Zane, who has known him for eleven years and co-starred with him in Heart and Souls, Natural Born Killers, Only You says, "Robert's improvisational mind far exceeds the usual limits of wit and timing. I'll respect anyone who will jump the net after a game of ping pong. He sent me a better table than the one he broke. I should have him jump on my stereo. I'm sure I'd get an upgrade."
Born to chaos in New York City, his parents pre-occupied with making experimental films, Downey and his older sister, Allyson, moved around constantly. Downey was just five when he debuted in his father's film Pound. Two years later, he appeared in Greaser's Palace as a boy who gets his throat cut by god. "We brought Robert along to New Mexico with us so we wouldn't have to get a babysitter," actor/writer/producer/director Robert Downey Sr remembers. "We called for a second take, and he said, 'Why didn't you get it right the first time?' When he was ten, I could tell he was going to be an actor."
Downey himself can't remember. "Was acting a burning desire of mine? People tell me it was. But if I hadn't been born in a major city, into a family that was already in show business, I wonder if my career would ever have happened." Tired of the bread dough, Downey turns to biting his fingernails. "My father was, and still is, my role model," he says. "He had to be real ballsy to go out and say, 'No one's ever seen anything like this before. I wonder if they will freak out?' He has that maverick energy I really admire. I have it too." It emerged from the way he was raised. "My generation was so independent," he says. "I remember telling my dad, 'I'm going to go and see Allyson at her school in Vermont.' He'd say, 'Oh yeah, what's that going to run me?' 'seventy-five dollars round trip and twenty-five dollars for me.' 'Okay.' I walked out the door. I was thirteen." "It was great, but on the other hand ..." Downey has a pained look on his face. "I think my parents thought this hands-off thing really seemed to work." When Downey was thirteen, his parents divorced. He stayed in New York with his mother, while his father moved to Los Angeles. Did the divorce traumatize him? "I remember having a really good time through my teens," he says. "That was probably THC-induced." (THC being the active ingredient in cannabis.) Notes Downey Sr, "I wasn't around as much as most fathers. I was out making my films. If Robert wanted to be wild, it was okay with me. I wouldn't do anything differently except I wouldn't allow anyone to smoke marijuana. I can't believe how we thought it was okay. I don't want to become like an AA-babbling jerk, but if I knew then what I know now ..."
Bring up the subject of drugs to Downey Jr, and he says, in a rare tone of world-weariness, "I can't talk about it anymore because it's so boring." He would rather tell different tales on himself. "I've really gotten away with a lot," he brags, his brown eyes flickering with amusement. "After my parents divorced, I became very comfortable rifling through my mother's purse for money. She didn't know. I probably confiscated a good 20-60% of her alimony the first thing in the morning before I went to school. I could have anything I wanted from Bagel Nosh." At fifteen, Downey moved to Los Angeles to live with his father and "stole mopeds to drive or sell if I needed money. I was never caught. I must have stolen $5000 worth of Lacoste and Polo sweaters from a store in L.A. Finally, I stopped, because I couldn't explain any more sweaters than I had." His main positive distraction at Santa Monica High School was acting. "I got to play Will Parker in Oklahoma," Downey says. "Ramon Estevez taught me how to tap-dance. He'd come by and pick me up in this oversized red Cadillac convertible. Can you imagine me, the weirdo from New York, and him, the punk rocker with blue hair, tap dancing in a studio in front of a mirror?"
Encouraged by his father's good words about his ability ("Robert was great singing, dancing and jumping around"), Downey quit school during eleventh grade and went to New York to be an actor. In 1983, he won a tiny part in Baby It's You, and then a bigger part in Firstborn, where he met Sarah Jessica Parker. He was eighteen. "What I really remember about Downey is how smart and funny and fast and relentless he was," says Parker, who lived with him for nearly eight years and has remained his friend. "I'd never encountered that kind of humor before, and I was mad for it. He's not your run-of-the-mill funnyman. So much of his work is improv. It's literally flying out of his mouth. There's no one else like him."
Directors soon began making the same discovery. Downey did three quick films—Tuff Turf, Weird Science, Back to School—and spent a forgettable season on Saturday Night Live in 1985-86. Then, in 1987, came Less Than Zero, a hard look at how drugs undermined the lives of privileged Beverly Hills teenagers. According to Downey, Less Than Zero marked the turning point in his career. "I knew how much was riding on it," he recalls, "and I said, 'This is it. Do not pass go. If you do not kick ass here, you get no career.' I felt a lot of pressure and it took a lot of discipline to play a drug addict without doing drugs. I consider it my own personal D-Day." Although the movie received mixed reviews, Downey's performance was highly praised. At the time, he had a drug problem himself, although he insists, "Not when I was working. I kept my work life separate from my private life."
Later that year, he went to a drug rehabilitation clinic but was vague about whether the therapy took. What he does say is this, "I hardly smoke, so aside from a strong leaning toward fatty food, I consider myself the picture of health." After Less Than Zero, Downey continued making movies, Johnny be Good, Rented Lips, 1969, Too Much Sun, Soapdish, Chaplin, Short Cuts, Heart and Souls, Natural Born Killers, Only You and now, Restoration. Some memorable titles but also some stink bombs, and Downey knows it. He says, "I don't think I've ever dropped the ball once, really, in anything I've done. I've been in stuff that's not so good, but I always had a good time and people seemed to enjoy it. But maybe that's not enough anymore. Someone I trust recently told me, 'You can't afford to do something that even remotely appears to have been done for other than artistic reasons. You've been really, really lucky. Don't tempt fate too much.'"
It's just the kind of comment that might tempt Downey into defiance, especially since he's always in need of money, by his own account. "I went broke making Restoration," he announces. "This one really put me in the poorhouse, but I love it so much. It's a hilarious romp through 17th century England, seen through the eyes of my character—a physician with severe leanings toward debauchery. He abandons medicine when King Charles II appoints him head of the Royal dogs. I remember the day they brought me my costume for the feather scene. That's what the costume was, a feather." A canary feather? "No, it had quite a bit of plumage. But do you know how hard it is to make a feather stay in place while you're running? We had 75 extras in the scene, and there I was with my ass hanging out, nowhere to turn. The feather was held in place by an on-site metal coil. It kept getting wet because in the scene I was running and carrying a carafe of grape juice, supposedly wine, and I slopped it on the feather. There was no spare feather, so they had to hook up a dryer to blow the feather dry. I kept worrying, 'What if I've damaged my appendage for the sake of a sight gag?'"
This willingness to play a feather scene is part of the Downey legend. "Robert has us peeing in our pants every day," says his wife, actress Deborah Falconer. "He's the most intelligent, romantic, inspiring, genius derelict I've ever met. Settling down hasn't curbed his wild, spontaneous nature, which is wonderful." Downey isn't so sure. What if growing up means getting boring? "Am I going to be a gadfly and keep using my energy for mundane and adolescent adventures?" he asks. "Or will I keep shifting more and more of that energy over to creating a safe and serious environment for my family? I wonder if some people think it's funny visual me having a wife and a kid?"
On the contrary, Downey's family and friends seem mostly relieved that he got married and took such adult responsibilities as home ownership and fatherhood. "Having a son changed Robert big time," Downey Sr says. "It made him see that the world has some kind of order to it." Downey Jr. says, "It's about ... it's about ..." Boundaries? "That's exactly the word. Boundaries. Teach your children boundaries, how to recognize and set their own." He gazes across the restaurant, thinking about his own boundary-free youth. "God, I can see it all," he finally says. "As a father, I'm very protective, which is weird. Think about the way a lot of guys drive. you're on a hill and you pass somebody going 70 when you should be going 45. I'd never, ever, dream of doing anything but the speed limit with Indio in the car. It's a great excuse for me to become that kind of hidden grandpa I am all the time anyway." Parker talked in amazement about his transformation. "Five or six years ago, we didn't discuss being parents," she says. "It didn't matter what I wanted. It was clear that accidental or not, parenthood was not something you would impose on Downey. He has wanted to be a grown-up, and I think he's been pursuing it—although not always successfully. Now he's trying to be selfless. After Indio was born, he said to me—and I couldn't believe it because it was so cliché—'Wow, I'm not the center of attention anymore.'"
Out of the disorder of his childhood comes an almost touching craving for order. "After I'd been in London working on Restoration," he says, "I came back to find that Debbie had gone into every bathroom in our house with little baskets and put little rolled-up towels and soaps. She knew I'd like it if our house resembled a hotel. That was one of the high points of 1994, seeing all those hand towels there and knowing if there were two on Wednesday, on Thursday the laundry would be done and then there would be four. I want things to be proper, if possible." And how did Falconer know her husband craved little rolled-up hand towels? "He told me about a hundred times," she says laughing. "I think that changed his whole life. He loves to have everything clean and organized, and he talks about it while dropping his socks in the sink or putting mayonnaise on the TV while spreading it on a tuna sandwich. Thank goodness we have great help." Downey says, "I consider myself intelligent, but being a high school drop-out, I might not have pursued certain skills. There's the whole planning-your-life thing. Was there some class I missed during the last semester of my senior year that would have made it all come together?" He's now playing with a piece of lemon, shaping it into an igloo. It doesn't mold very well so he turns his attention to biting a plastic straw. "I think parents should sit down and tell you about sex and money," he says. "As far as sex goes, they should do it as much like a friend as they can, just flat out and only what you're comfortable with. Re: money, they should have it together themselves, and it's their fucking duty to tell you how to do the same."
Directing is something Downey did learn about at home, and now he feels as if he's grown up enough to try it himself. He's written a period thriller, set in 1962 Las Vegas, that he hopes to direct sometime next year. "I want to take control," he says. "The only thing holding me back from producing, directing and writing, is that I figure I'll have to get up at 6 AM too many days in a row. But if I feel rested, it's great to carpe the hell out of the diem."
Responsibility may be settling on Downey's shoulders, but this is a man who cashed his first movie paycheck and carried the greenbacks around in his pocket until Parker introduced him to her accountant. He still has a cavalier attitude toward money, even though he and Falconer "are trying to live a simpler lifestyle." But Downey will be Downey. Walking out of the restaurant, he sees a familiar shop window and his face immediately brightens. "See you later," he says. "We bought a rug here and took it back, so I've got a $3000 credit. I'm going to go in and look around."
P.S. Downey got his wife a red desk to go with their red piano. Just right for paying all Downey's bills. 