The movie that sent Robert Downey Jr into Hollywood exile: “It’s been this fucking crucible”
Even when he was at his lowest ebb, Robert Downey Jr was still a semi-regular fixture onscreen. Everyone in town knew that the precociously gifted actor was dealing with some serious personal issues, some of which made it onto the set, but he still never found himself out of work for too long.
His substance addiction was common knowledge throughout the industry, and he was arrested several times throughout the 1990s on drug charges that resulted in several stints in rehab and a spell behind bars, but he was never truly blacklisted or permanently removed from casting conversations.
Downey Jr admitted that he’d shot several scenes for Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers while completely out of his mind, and Jodie Foster had to shut down production on Home for the Holidays to safeguard his well-being when the star’s wayward behaviour began to encroach on his professionalism.
And yet, he remained on a consistent streak of appearing in at least one movie per year between 1983 and 2000. He was in three films apiece in 1993, 1994, and 1995, and upped it to four releases in 1999, even though he was never too far away from making the headlines for the wrong reasons.
There’s a cruel sense of irony to the Academy Award winner’s longest-ever sabbatical from screens because he was clean at the time. Downey Jr maintained his sobriety for the production of Curtis Hanson’s Wonder Boys in 1999, but he relapsed soon after principal photography.
After another arrest, he was removed from all of his in-development projects, including a voice role in the animated series God, the Devil, and Bob, a Mark Kostabi biopic, Nick Cassavetes’ Unless That Someone Is You with Courtney Love, and a part in the Wesley Snipes action thriller One Night Stand.
There was an acclaimed recurring role on Ally McBeal that won him a Golden Globe, but he was fired from that gig, too. After Wonder Boys had been released in February 2003, Downey Jr wouldn’t be seen on the big screen again for another 40 months until The Singing Detective lit a slow-burning fuse on his comeback.
Thanks to his guardian angel, Mel Gibson, who’d paid the insurance bond to guarantee his friend’s presence in the lead role, career rehabilitation was on the cards. The terrible psychological horror Gothika was the most important domino effect, and Downey Jr admitted that following his extended exile from mainstream Hollywood, he had to eat a fat slice of humble pie.
In an interview with W Magazine, long before Iron Man landed, the actor admitted that he had to “half as much and work twice as hard” to even begin putting the pieces back together. “The amount of effort that it took in a way is its own reward,” he said. “Because it’s been this fucking crucible that I honestly would not wish on an enemy. But it really suited my own journey’s purposes just fine.”
When Wonder Boys wrapped, he had no idea it would be three and a half years before he’d be trusted with another film, but it’s been a long time since he completed that phoenix-like resurrection.
