Finally, Downey upside

He is, quite simply, luminescent on the screen — oozing with a manic energy arguably wielded by only two other actors in Hollywood — Johnny Depp and Mel Gibson.

But while Johnny and Mel have successfully (and repeatedly) cashed in on that intangible energy and sheer acting talent through a slew of box-office winners, Robert Downey Jr. has had to grapple with his personal demons of substance abuse. In a period of five years until early in this new millennium, Downey had been repeatedly arrested and put through drug treatment programs. In court, he had said famously to a judge: “It’s like I have a loaded gun in my mouth and my finger’s on the trigger, and I like the taste of the gunmetal.”

And for a while, it seemed that Downey — a true actor’s actor — would play the hackneyed role of an artist with great promise and talent taking the inevitable downward spiral into oblivion.

Thankfully, Downey refused to go quietly, and struggled towards the light. Despite the turbulence of the unsettling valleys and peaks of his career and personal life, Downey was fortunate to count on the support system comprised of his loved ones and loyal friends — not to mention his own indefatigable spirit —  to rise above the disappointments and difficulties. Never mind, for instance, that he was let go by the TV show he helped resuscitate (Ally McBeal) because of his drug problems. Never mind that producers and directors wouldn’t dare cast him without a costly bond for fear that he couldn’t deliver. Never mind that, suddenly, the consummate actor who earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor through 1992’s Chaplin was a risk that studios weren’t quite ready to take on.

Interestingly, the man who enabled Downey to return to the silver screen that obviously loves him was Mel Gibson (who would later have to battle his own struggle against alcoholism), who had struck up a friendship with the actor after co-starring together on Air America (1990). He paid the insurance for Downey for 2004’s The Singing Detective.

From then on, it was a different Downey. Wrote Rebecca Winters Keegan recently in Time, “Downey, 43, is finally claiming the career he was always meant to have, one befitting a fiercely talented, and eccentric, and magnetic leading man.”

In Iron Man (the sequel will be released in 2010), it is tempting to draw parallels between Downey and his character Tony Stark. Both were seemingly on top of their game until plucked from it through circumstances not necessarily of their own making. Downey had revealed that he had shared in the drug habit of his dad before he even reached 10. The illusion of the personal safety of billionaire industrialist and inventor Stark also ended with his capture by Afghan rebels. Yet despite being hopelessly flawed, both shine the brightest by embracing their humanity and rising above it. Not very original, perhaps, but no less inspiring.

The choice of acting prowess over simple eye candy bodes well for upcoming Hollywood comic-book adaptations on the big screen. Marvel’s The Hulk is due for release this year, and playing the role of troubled Bruce Banner is Edward Norton — another acting giant. With due respect to former Hulk Eric Bana, this makes another clear statement for the cause of acting mettle (plus, Norton carries the weakling persona better, truth to tell).  The actor, producer, screenwriter and director was nominated twice for an Oscar (for Primal Fear and American History X) and bagged a Golden Globe (for Primal Fear). Our favorite Stark will briefly appear in that Marvel flick as well.

Robert Downey Jr. recently made Time’s list of 100 Most Influential People in the World. Actor/director Ben Stiller (who directed him in the forthcoming Tropic Thunder) wrote: “He riffs, he improvises, he is funnier than the script most of the time. What it takes to be an actor, good or bad, is a bravery of sorts. Downey’s choices are as brave as they come.” Indeed, in Tropic Thunder, he plays a method actor from Australia playing an African-American soldier in a Vietnam War movie within a movie. Dizzy yet? Exactly.

Stiller concluded: “I was an admirer of his before I worked with him. Now I feel as if by some gift from a higher power, Robert Downey Jr. was sent down to Earth to help us all realize (through his work) that the human experience is a sad, funny, beautiful thing, fully of imperfection and irony. I have had a chance to work with one of the greats, and he tricked me into actually thinking I was keeping up.”

We’d be honored to try to keep up with this iron of a man we know as Robert Downey Jr.