August 28, 2005
THE LIFE OF HOLLYWOOD
Spinning into control
For years his life was a picture of chaos.
Now Robert Downey Jr. says hes too busy, and feeling too hopeful,
to run amok.
By Mary McNamara, Times Staff Writer
There may come a time when Robert Downey Jr. can have a conversation
about something other than his "comeback," but this isn't
it. "Such a good actor," people have been saying for years,
using a tone of wistful regret normally reserved for a fat girl
with a pretty face.
Now, watching as Downey nimbly carries the odd and shifting weight
of Shane Black's upcoming comic-noir-thriller-romance, "Kiss
Kiss, Bang Bang," it is tempting to heave a sigh of relief
and say, "He's back." At 40, the Hollywood bad boy has
finally seen the light, cashed in the chips, realized the error
of his ways and recommitted himself to the craft in which he has
always shown so much promise.
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But it's not that easy, because Robert Downey Jr. has never been
easy. Yes, he is alive and well and living on a cul-de-sac in Brentwood,
days away from his marriage to producer Susan Levin, a lovely, levelheaded
woman he met while working, as opposed to while in rehab.
Yes, he has been clean and sober for more than a year, with half
a dozen projects (including "The Shaggy Dog" and "A
Scanner Darkly") in various stages of production. And with
a movie to promote, Downey is happy to discuss whatever, the whole
deal, in full-disclosure overdrive, complete with dead-on comedic
timing, a not insignificant talent for mimicry, and an energy level
that vacillates between high and super high.
But if you're looking for the New Recovery Spokesman or a solemn
testimonial, you need to know, right upfront, you'd do better to
look elsewhere. Because Downey's having none of that.
"For years I took pride in being resilient," he says.
"But that turned into this guy who can get hit by a brickbat
every morning and still look kind of cute. I mean, there's 'ready
to be ready,' and then there's waking up in the morning feeling
like you've been hit in the back with a sledgehammer. But I can't
side with the pathetic huckster thing of 'and it was made so public,
how humiliating and terrible,' " he says, grimacing, falling
back in his chair. "I'm no more massive or smaller than any
recovering addict. You talk to guys who've had the plug in the jug
for 30 years, and they don't think about having a drink on New Year's
Eve they think about it on Thursday, August 6, at 7 in the morning.
For no good reason. So it isn't about 'no more margarita parties
for you, mister,' because it was never about margarita parties in
the first place.
"Here's what I learned lately," he says, pausing, finally,
for breath. He leans forward, and suddenly there it is, the look
behind all those "such a good actor" sighs. That impossible-to-dissect
mixture of mischief and meaning, sincerity and truly high-grade
b.s., Robert Downey Jr., all wide eyes and self-mocking smile capturing
the delicious contrariness of life as a human being.
"Here is what I've learned," Downey says again. "I
am very very very high maintenance. Even without being the inventor
of any of my own impediments from this day forward, it's still tough,
it's still chaotic. Because I am not," he pauses and again
there is that look, just for a moment, before he shuts it down with
the big movie star smile, "I'm not on a level playing ground
with most of my peers."
Compact but commanding
Like many actors, Downey is smaller in real life than he seems
on the screen. Maybe 5 feet 8, 5 feet 9, slender in a martial-arts-cut
kind of way, he is quiet and almost unassuming; he does not occupy
a lot of space, literally or figuratively. Until he starts talking.
Then his face becomes the most animated thing in any room, words
rattling out fast and shiny-bright, like marbles from a bottomless
sack, and it's impossible to look away. Even for a minute. Because
you might miss something.
Sitting in the Daily Grill "My fiancée teases me
that this is my default restaurant, but what can I say? It's the
Daily Grill; it's fabulous" he vamps for 10, 15 minutes,
kvetching about how his 11-year-old son, Indio, is so on him to
quit smoking. Again.
"He took my cigarettes the other night and hid them down a
paper towel roll. Now, that's an old tweaker move, where you'd stash
your speed pipe so the kids don't find it because you're so out
of it, right? He was so proud of his hiding place he had to show
me, but then he threw them away, which is a complete codependent
move, so I just waited until he went back upstairs and fished them
out of the garbage. And that" he holds up a battered pack
of cigarettes that looks exactly as if it had been stuffed in a
paper towel roll recently "is what I'm working with right
now."
The Camel unfiltereds are not the only props; in a black backpack
he carries bottles of vitamins and a pillbox the length of your
arm filled with herbs and supplements, which he proceeds to wash
down with gallons of caffeinated beverages. "Three or four
more of these," he says, smiling down at a large iced tea,
"and I'll be just fine."
Even the sound of his voice is difficult to categorize he speaks
with the hard round vowels of L.A. using a vocabulary that stretches
far beyond Valley-speak, while his New York origins peer through
in the cheerful profanity of virtually every sentence. Imagine every
fourth word beginning with "f." Imagine it strangely endearing.
He turns down the bread because he's been off carbs for something
like five years, which was hard for the first year but "then,
like anything, it becomes completely normal. I see Brad Pitt eating
in those movies, interesting character thing, hats off to you, man,
'cause I know you had to ingest like five or six BLTs over the course
of a few days.' But I hear he can eat whatever he wants and he looks
the same, whereas if I don't eat the right thing I look like Sal
Mineo being pulled from the East River, like I've been watching
the History Channel for three years and eating Ben & Jerry's.
'Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang' was perfect," he adds, "because
we shot at night and I had my [martial arts instructor] who was
there, and literally every day he came at lunchtime, which was like
10:30, to train me so I got my energy up."
The Downey comeback has become quite a genre over the years. In
1997, "Two Girls and a Guy" provided a nice counterpoint
to Downey's first arrest (for possession of drugs and a firearm),
and three years later, he pulled out a performance on "Ally
McBeal" that gave everyone hope (until he got arrested again,
and fired). After a three-year sentence that involved time in the
penitentiary and a rehab clinic, he starred in a remake of "The
Singing Detective" and with Halle Berry in "Gothika,"
the latter notable mostly for the fact that he had to pay his own
insurance to get hired.
Last year it continued. He got off probation, finally, did "Oprah"
and released his debut album, "The Futurist," a collection
of jazz-inflected middle-of-the-road rock whose quality was often
overlooked by those marveling at his ability to sit up straight
and speak coherently.
But "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang," due in October, is the legitimate
return of the actor everyone remembers so fondly from "Chaplin."
Downey's Harry Lockhart is a small-time thief who, through plot
devices only a noir comic thriller could deliver, winds up training
to be an actor in Hollywood while tracking down a real murderer
with the aid of a gay private detective (Val Kilmer) and a cresting-the-hill
actress (Michelle Monaghan).
Hapless yet goodhearted, arrogant yet full of self-contempt, Harry
is a lovable loser who allows Downey to do what he does best: create
a character in which contradictions live side by side in utter believability,
winking at each other occasionally. Black, who is making his directorial
debut, did not write the part for Downey, but you can't tell this
watching the film.
"We lucked out," says Black.
In the parlance of the film, it wasn't luck, baby, it was fate.
"Kiss Kiss" producer Joel Silver had taken Downey under
his wing several years ago, after Mel Gibson called to say, "The
kid's clean. Help him out."
"I had worked with him back in '83 on 'Weird Science,' "
Silver says, "and we had a great rapport. But then I saw him,
I don't know, five years ago at a restaurant where he was completely
out of it and rude, and I thought, 'That guy is gone.' "
But bowing to Gibson and fond memory, Silver cast Downey in "Gothika,"
where Downey proved he could stay sober and where he met Levin.
So a year or so later, when Levin was sitting on the sofa reading
a Shane Black script and laughing, Downey wanted in. No matter that
Silver had originally envisioned it as a Big Name project.
"Robert would come in and read just for the fun of it, and
I'd be like, 'Hey, that's exactly what I had in mind,' " Black
says. Eventually the project was rethought, with a smaller budget,
and Downey and Kilmer were brought on board.
"I felt like we were taking a bit of a chance," Black
says. "Val has his own reputation, but as soon as we got going
I was like, 'Why didn't anyone think of teaming these guys up together
before?' "
For Downey, the film, which was shot in downtown Los Angeles, offered
a quality reentry situation in both form and content. It was a short
shoot 35 days so there was zero time for messing around. (One
of those days included the presence of Indio, who plays the young
Harry in the film's first scene.) And in Harry, Downey had something
of a soul mate.
"As quiet as it's kept," he says, "I tend to play
people who are too smart for their own good. Harry is stupid about
everything. It doesn't matter his heart's in the right place because
everything he does to help, if he had thought it through, he would
realize he couldn't have done it worse. But in the end he's OK.
He's even got a real job that he can show up for, and the romance
thing, well, they've got as good a shot as any."
Silver is more direct. "Look," he says, "so much
of Robert's life is tied up in his missteps, in the drugs and the
arrests, no way you can ignore that in the film, and this film doesn't.
But it was the movie he was born to play, funny and smart, and his
relationship with Val is amazing."
It also didn't hurt that Downey's asking price is significantly
less than it once was. "This is a great actor who isn't expensive,"
says Silver, laughing.
As both Black and Silver acknowledge, the film is a tough one to
market because it is almost impossible to describe in Hollywood
bullet points. But then Black, who hasn't been on anyone's A-list
for a while, had little to lose, and neither, really, did Downey.
He says he was predictably pleased to be on the top of the call
sheet for the first time in many years, and he wasn't nervous or
scared or intimidated by the work or what it implied.
"If you have a baby who's had colic for four months since
it's been born and it's running a 104-degree fever on the day you're
supposed to take the bar exam, you're not tripping on the bar exam,"
he says. "I had other things on my mind."
"For a lot of us," he adds, "and I include anyone
in their 30s and 40s who have been around and who admit that life
is super hard and super worth it, it's 70% maintenance. [Because]
when it falls below 70%, you're going to start to spin. And when
you start to spin you're going to have a lot of apologizing to do
on a daily basis, and it's not worth it."
Getting back up to speed
Here is something people who don't take drugs often forget: No
one takes drugs because he wants to break the law, or end his marriage,
or wind up crusty and homeless, or accidentally break into someone's
house and fall asleep there because it looks sort of familiar. People
take drugs because drugs make them feel better. And some people
have a deeper need to feel better than others.
Right now Downey is keeping very busy. He stepped right off the
set of "Fur" into a table reading for "Zodiac,"
in which he plays a reporter on the trail of the Zodiac killer,
into an eight-day shoot of "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints,"
then off to the Hamptons for the wedding. Part of this is an actor
trying to get back up to speed, and part of it is a person figuring
out how to live a different sort of life: If the spaces in between
are where the trouble starts, then the best thing to do, at least
for right now, is close them up.
"Admitting the problem is only one of the steps," Downey
says, "and guess what? It isn't the biggest one. This is the
recurring theme in my life, 'Double K, Double B' being the first
movie I've done in like 70 tries that works from beginning to end
and is innovative and fun to do.
"I was done when I was 30," Downey continues. "It
just took me another 10 because sometimes it takes another 10 years.
Because I have an innate inability to capitulate to clearly differing
opinions. Someone says to me, 'Hey, man, looks like [it's] about
to hit the fan, you better cash in your chips and get up to the
room' and I'd be like, 'Yeah, man, thanks for that, but could you
please go take a shower now so I can put on your shoes and take
your wallet and run out to score because: I'm. Not. Done. Yet.'
"
Now, he says, he is. Done. Now the light's on and he's doing the
work, and the people who know him well see the difference.
"I knew it was different when he released the album,"
says writer Sam Slovick, an old friend. "He's been sitting
on that for a while. And this," he says, gesturing to the crowd
around him, "this has been a big help. A big help."
"This" refers to the opening of the new home for the
Los Angeles Traditional Wing Chun Kung Fu Academy. On a warm Saturday
night, Downey has shown up to support founder and chief instructor
Eric Oram, who for the past two years has been Downey's teacher.
Oram trained Downey almost every day on the set of "Kiss Kiss."
"We called him the bald Colin Farrell," Black says, which
is both a nod to one of the film's jokes and a strikingly accurate
physical description of the man.
Although a few of the 150 or so highly eclectic Wing Chun enthusiasts
gathered in the alley off Purdue Avenue in West Los Angeles give
Downey sideways celebrity-registering stares, Oram, or Sifu, as
everyone calls him, is clearly the star. When his wife shows up
with the new baby in one arm and a blender in the other, it's Downey
who relieves her of the blender and takes it to the bar. And when
Oram's 2-year-old son, unfazed by his father's status, repeatedly
interrupts Oram's introductory speech, it's Downey who unobtrusively
picks the little boy up and quiets him down.
The actor has been peripherally involved in martial arts for years,
but he joined the academy three years ago. Before that, he says,
he didn't know if he wanted to box or do jujitsu or if his year
"would involve an occasional 30-day spin dry," which can
make training difficult. Wing Chun, which was developed by Buddhist
monks, involves as much meditation and concentration as it does
self-defense moves. It also requires discipline of an interpersonal
nature; while Oram's business card includes a "film & stage
combat choreography/SAG" reference, he doesn't ask Downey when
he'll be in for training; he tells him.
"You'll have to ask Sifu," Downey replies to a young
man who asks the actor if he would like to do some training in another
form of martial arts.
Oram is just one of several people on whom Downey relies now
people who allow him to address his needs before they spin out of
control.
On the set of "Kiss Kiss," he says, his needs far outstripped
those of costar Val Kilmer, who is known to have certain, well,
expectations. "Val may have turned in that bill for the $5,000
haircut, but I was the one with high-end demands. You know those
cups, like bionic gulp? I needed them. Filled with green tea and
Coffee-mate, or espresso and foamed milk. Whatever. I needed my
Sifu and Joe from the Tao Arts Healing Center every single day on
the shoot."
On "Fur," in which he plays Lionel, the "wolfman"
with whom photographer Diane Arbus, played by Nicole Kidman, has
an intimate relationship, there were other issues. It took him hours
to get into makeup each day, which was beyond uncomfortable and
made eating difficult. "You try eating a bite of curried tofu
and pulling five or six 16-inch strands of someone else's hair out
of your throat," he says. "At the end of the film, it
behooved me to look emaciated and 'Mechanic'-like cut, and it was
not a problem because on the whole shoot eating was an exercise
in irritation."
To help himself prepare, he says, he asked that no one talk to
him during the first half-hour he was on set. Maybe that would make
him seem like a complete brat, maybe people would circulate rumors
about how insane he was, but he didn't care because it was necessary.
"I knew I would suffer a personality meltdown if I didn't
have the first half-hour of every day. It can't be like, 'Hi, you're
here, can we get the glue on your eyelids and camera's ready, even
though it's going to take you two hours to get made up, we just
want you to know, we'll shoot whatever we can without you, but the
camera's. Ready.' So first half-hour, hour lunch, set time when
we were done, these were my requirements. Not because I'm a diva
but because I can predict that I will not be OK. Two days after
we're done, I'll do something stupid and [mess] up my summer while
they're editing or lounging in Cape Cod or whatever. They've got
something in the can, good for them, and I'm in the asylum."
The crew thought he was nuts, he says, tip-toeing around, probably
rolling their eyes at his morning meditation. But that didn't matter
either, because this is all part of the maintenance. "Finally,
finally at 40 years old, I can say what it is I need," he says.
"And it's a stupid thing, but if you're the guy who knows how
to pitch, you know what it takes not to lose your arm, and if you
don't ask for it, you're being irresponsible as an athlete."
What it takes, he says, is ongoing nurturing, some of which may
well be "compensatory for growing up in an environment that
was pretty fantastic but put me in a pretty reckless situation because
I wasn't asking for guidance and it wasn't being offered except
in ethereal and cool ways."
Much has been made of Downey's youth; his father, underground filmmaker
Robert Downey Sr., famously gave his son his first film role as
a puppy in "Pound" and his first joint, both before
Downey turned 7. Downey refuses to blame any "socially acceptable
family trauma" for his long-term affair with black tar heroin
and cocaine, but a recent blast from the past did give him pause.
While he was filming "The Shaggy Dog" this year, a grip
approached him and mentioned that he had known Downey as a child.
"He came up to me and said, 'I used to baby-sit you when your
dad was making "Pound." I know what it was like back then.'
And he handed me the slate from 'Pound,' which was the first movie
I was ever in, and it said '3/17/70.' So it was literally like 35
years ago and change, 35 years ago and change," he repeats.
For a moment there is silence. For a moment he can't quite think
of what to say next; words, so clearly part of his support team,
his steppingstones through the boggy places, fail him. For a moment.
"It looked like something the art department had come up with
to look like a period collector's item, like Sotheby's from 'The
Fortune,' " he says, shaking his head at the vastness of it
all. "So lately there's been a whole sense of closure."
One big difference
If you ask Downey what's different about this time around, he won't
mention the movies or the Wing Chun or the album. Instead he'll
point to Susan Levin and say "that." They've been together
for almost three years, which means she has seen most of his many
moods, including the one he calls Mr. Skellabones, the guy who,
after sneaking away for a weekend with a bag of dope and some lame
excuse, comes back, looks her straight in the eye and, when she
asks how the weekend was, says, "Grrrreeeat."
"Well, it's not like we met and I put down my party hat,"
Downey says. "She met me, fell in love with me, then she met
Darth Vader and said, 'I don't like that guy.' "
Levin has been working for Silver for six years, overseeing projects
including "House of Wax" and "Gothika." Clear
of eye and skin, with a wide and perfect smile, she looks more like
an Ivory Girl than a Hollywood producer. And she was not attracted
to the self-destructive movie star thing. "She's a Chicago
girl," he says. "In L.A., usually you flash your devil
card and girls are like, 'Oh, that? That's cool' or 'Shouldn't we
do this out of town, go up to San Ysidro or something and get down
with our bad selves?' "
Levin, on the other hand, is used to being accountable for her
actions. If and when she delivers an ultimatum, he says, she's set
it up so she can follow through. "It's not like that, though,"
he adds, "because [staying clean] can't be about the kid or
the gal or anything. But it's nice to know they're serious about
it."
He's serious about it too, but that doesn't mean recovery is his
new second career, or that he has suddenly and miraculously gotten
all the answers, which he can now share with the studio audience.
That's not how it works most of the time, and it's certainly not
how it works for Downey. Though lately, he says, he has gotten more
than a few frantic phone calls.
"It's like calling Stan Winston when you want a monster built,"
he says. "When my phone rings and they say so-and-so's out
on one or your old buddy is back out on Front Street, screaming
and crying, it's easy. And I'll pick him up and bring him where
I'm going for the day, which will probably include something that
may be of some benefit, but I'm not going to any intervention. Because
that's another big ego trip. Best way I can be of service,"
he says, taking a long drag on his cigarette, "is to realize
that I am still really, gratefully, happily and, until further notice,
on the mend, functioning very highly and loving it, Chief."
All very mature and healthy, and yet....And yet, the man is still
human, is still Robert Downey Jr., and he can't help but reminisce
about the old days and comment on the newbies.
"When I came out here at 17, 18, staying at the Chateau with
Jimmy Spader," he says, "there was this understanding
that everyone went completely off their rockers for the weekend,
then pulled together for the work on Monday. And there was something
not very genuine about that, and I had no intention of adhering
to that whatsoever. It's so funny to me," he adds, "so
passé, the hard-partying movie stars and starlets it's
like demonstrating at a nuclear power plant that's already been
shut down and turned to natural gas."
He does feel sorry for those who are sowing their wild oats in
this time of hyper-celebrity watch. With everyone in America plugged
into some bad-behavior-tip hotline, he says, a star can't complain
in a Middle America hair salon without it getting back to the tabs.
Back in the day, he says, it was different. "It used to be
Russell Crowe, just did 'Cinderella Man' about some guy in Jersey
he could shoot someone in New York and still catch a pass. 'We
understand, we have no problem with Mr. Crowe, and we remember when
he came through here, he was very nice.' I get to marvel at this,"
Downey says, shaking his head again, shoulders still, face an open
puzzle. "I did all my left-foot dancing before it was super-televised.
If I was doing that stuff now.... " He looks down at his iced
tea, takes another swig.
"Now," he says, "I'm getting cranked." 'I'm
not going to any intervention. Because that's another big ego trip.
Best way I can be of service is to realize that I am still really,
gratefully ... and, until further notice, on the mend, functioning
very highly and loving it.'
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