Robert Downey Jr.’s Real-Life Story

ARTISTS ARE SO PECULIAR –

Jan. 3, 2024 – The role that made critics sit up and take notice of Robert Downey Jr. came in director Marek Kanievska’s “Less Than Zero,” the 1987 adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel in which he portrayed Julian, the drug-addicted best friend of Andrew McCarthy’s protagonist, Clay. For Downey, the role was suited to him in unfortunate ways, and in a 2003 piece for The Guardian, he cited the film as the point at which his personal drug issues began to snowball out of control. “Until that movie, I took my drugs after work and on the weekends,” he said. “That changed on ‘Less Than Zero’ … The character was an exaggeration of myself. Then things changed and, in some ways, I became an exaggeration of the character.”

Perhaps tragically, Downey would later say that Kanievska understood the similarities between Downey and Julian, and pinned his hopes to the role being a cathartic experience for the actor — hopes that, obviously, failed to pan out.

Speaking with The New York Times in 2023, Downey spoke philosophically about the situation. “Kanievska … understood what I didn’t, which is, we’re doing something incredibly artistic: This guy is a mess and probably going to get worse, but he’s not as bad as the character he’s playing,” he said. “Can he have an experience whereby it may spare him years of untold agony? The answer was no, but it was a question worth asking.”