Why Robert Downey Jr owes everything to two bad movies and a flop
If he were ever able to permanently banish his personal demons, then there was always a strong chance Robert Downey Jr would be able to salvage the flaming wreckage his career was in danger of becoming in the early 2000s because he was simply too talented not to.
He’d been acting his entire life after making his screen debut at the age of five in his father’s 1970 comedy Pound, and it became clear very early on that he was a hugely gifted performer. His ill-fated and short-lived stint on Saturday Night Live didn’t show it, but it soon became clear there was a generational talent in the industry’s midst if he could keep himself together.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t, with Downey’s substance abuse and addiction issues constantly landing him in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Trips to prison and rehab failed to arrest his decline, and when he was fired from his Golden Globe-winning spot on Ally McBeal, it was beginning to feel like there was no way back.
A little serendipity tends to go a long way in a place like Hollywood, though, and Downey managed to find it in the unlikeliest of places. After completing a court-mandated programme, the star has been clean and sober since 2003, which coincided with two bad movies and a box office bomb beginning a second act that took him higher than he’d ever been before.
For most actors, churning out three misfires in quick succession is not a positive thing, but for Downey, it was quite literally life-changing and life-saving. After being ruled out of Woody Allen’s Melinda and Melinda because nobody was willing to cover the cost of ensuring him in the event of a relapse, decent roles were getting perilously thin on the ground.
As far as guardian angels go, Mel Gibson has got to be up there with the most unexpected, but when the producer agreed to pay the insurance bond in full so that his friend and Air America co-star could play the lead role in 2003’s The Singing Detective, little did he know the effect it would ultimately have.
It was Downey’s first lead role in years, and while the film itself tanked in cinemas and didn’t win much in the way of acclaim, his foot was back in the door. His next port of call would be a widely-panned psychological horror, which, on the surface, doesn’t come across as the ideal conduit for personal and professional salvation.
However, despite having 40% of his salary withheld in case he fell off the wagon, Halle Berry’s vehicle Gothika is perhaps the single most important movie Downey ever made. Not least of all because it was the first time he was introduced to production assistant Susan Levin, who he married the year after its 2004 release, with the pair now overseeing their own Team Downey banner.
The terrible genre flick also put him in the path of Joel Silver, who opted not to pay Downey in full to protect his assets. The veteran producer was a known associate of Shane Black, having worked with him on Lethal Weapon and The Last Boy Scout, and the screenwriter was in the midst of putting together his feature-length directorial debut, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
Downey ended up running lines with Black and Silver during his downtime on Gothika, which landed him the part of Harry Lockhart. Undoubtedly one of the finest crime capers of the 21st century, the jet-black Christmastime murder mystery is an utter delight, albeit one that flopped at the box office in spite of immediately winning over everybody who did pay for a ticket to catch it on the big screen.
One of those viewers was Jon Favreau, who’d been hired by Marvel Studios to direct its first self-financed blockbuster, Iron Man. He’d been contemplating a number of candidates for Tony Stark, but as soon as he saw Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, he knew exactly who he wanted. The top brass weren’t convinced, but when Downey won them over with his audition, it would end up as the best decision either party ever made.
A musical crime comedy based on a BBC series, a dramatically inert and formulaic chiller, and a modern noir channelling the spirit of Raymond Chandler that couldn’t even clear $16 million in ticket sales are not a heavyweight trio in isolation. Combine the three, and The Singing Detective, Gothika, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang are responsible for the lofty and resurgent position Downey currently finds himself in.
