While nowadays Robert Downey Jr. is one of Hollywood’s most famous actors, namely for his tenure as the boldly-casted Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (although there had initially been pushback to him playing Tony Stark), there was a time when he was in the headline for less desirable reasons. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Downey struggled with drug addiction, was repeatedly arrested and even spent multiple stints in prison. Decades later, he’s gotten real about his time spent behind bars and even recalled an embarrassing moment he had after taking a shower during this period of his life.
For context, the actor was first sentenced to six months in the Los Angeles County jail in late 1997, and then he served nearly a year at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison across 1999 to 2000, although he’s originally been sentenced to three years. Downey recalled his prison time during his visit to Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard after the eponymous host inquired, starting with saying the following when he was asked how long he was in jail before he accepted the gravity of his situation:
I’m gonna see if without thinking about it, I’m just gonna try to give you the flashcards. I'm in court, I'm being over-sentenced by an angry judge, and at some point, he said something in Latin, and I thought he was casting a spell on me.
Although Downey didn’t specify which prison stint he was referring to, his later comments indicate it was the second one, which happened as a result of him being arrested due to missing a required drug test. This followed three years after after he’d been arrested for possession of heroin, cocaine, and an unloaded .357 Magnum handgun while he was speeding down Sunset Boulevard, and that was followed a month later by him trespassing into a neighbor’s home and falling asleep in one of the beds while under the influence of a controlled substance. Cutting back to the present, Downey then recalled what it was like for him being in a facility packed with criminals:
Two weeks later, I'm in a place called Delano, which is a receiving center where they decide where you're going to go. Arguably the most dangerous place I've ever been in my life because nobody is designated. If they're a level 1, 2, 3 or 4 criminal, [everyone's there]. And you could just feel the evil in the air. And that was no trouble at all, because it was kind of like just being in a really bad neighborhood, and there was no opportunity there, there was only threats. So yes, everyone is going to take your wallet, so watch it.
While Robert Downey Jr. was a little under a decade away from helping launch the MCU, he was still a pretty well-known actor at the time thanks to movies like Weird Science, Back to School, Chaplin, Natural Born Killers and U.S. Marshals. Fortunately, Downey never felt like he was in any true danger while at Delano, although he nonetheless experienced an embarrassing moment while walking out of the shower one day:
I remember walking out, at one point, when I hopped out of my cell to go to the shower — by the way, this would be the best sound bite — and I didn't know it, but I was a little spun out and I had my underwear on backwards. ... I remember eliciting some strong chuckles and jeers from my fellow inmates. And once I had gotten through that, then I was transferred.
Robert Downey Jr. then said that “the closest experience” of “walking onto the yard that you’re going to be doing more than a year on” for the first time he could associate it to was “being sent a distant planet where there is no way home until the planets align.” He then clarified that it took him two weeks for him to get used to his incarcerated situation, but also noted that there’s “worse things” that could have happened to him besides being sent to an “institution,” and by Day 15 of this prison stint, he was “dialed in.” You can listen Downey’s extended comments about his prison time in the interview, but it’s nice that he can talk about this chapter of his life with such candor, and that it evidently wasn’t a traumatizing experience, at least so far as he let on.
These days, as if it hasn’t already been made abundantly clear, Robert Downey Jr. is in a much better place, which includes him having been sober for nearly two decades. He can next be seen as a member of Oppenheimer’s star-studded cast, with the 2023 new movie release opening on July 21. Downey is also executive producing and appearing in the upcoming miniseries The Sympathizer, which will premiere on HBO and to Max subscribers sometime in 2024.
