Part of The Avengers featuring Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth, and The Comeback with Mickey Rourke and Matthew McConaughey.
Rise to Fame
His father cast him in his first film at five and gave him marijuana at either age six or eight. By the early 1990s, he had an Academy Award nomination for Chaplin and a reputation as one of Hollywood's more promising actors. Neither lasted. A 1996 traffic stop turned into an arrest for cocaine, heroin, and an unloaded .357 Magnum, and he eventually served time in California state prison. Hollywood wouldn't touch him. Then Mel Gibson paid his insurance bond for The Singing Detective in 2003, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang followed in 2005, and Jon Favreau cast him as Tony Stark based partly on that performance. Iron Man opened in 2008 and the comeback became the story.
In the Spotlight
Winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Oppenheimer in 2024 looked like a good closing chapter. Playing Lewis Strauss, the scheming Atomic Energy Commission chairman, he reminded everyone who forgets between Marvel releases that he can actually act. He isn't closing anything. He showed up at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2024 to announce he'd return to the MCU as Doctor Doom in Avengers: Doomsday (2026) and Avengers: Secret Wars (2027), reportedly for significantly more than $80 million. The man who was once uninsurable in Hollywood is now its most expensive recurring character.
Side Notes
Robert Downey Sr. had packed more into his twenties than most people manage in a lifetime: Golden Gloves boxing champion, minor-league baseball player, off-off-Broadway playwright, experimental filmmaker. He'd done all of it before turning 22. His approach to parenting was similarly unorthodox. He gave his son marijuana at either age six or eight. Downey has called it his father's way of showing love. Downey Sr. said he regretted it. The actor ended up more famous than the filmmaker.