UNLIKELY HERO –

Aug. 4, 2024 – Downey Jr has been clean since 2003 and lives in Malibu with his second wife, Susan Levin, and their two children.

They share their pastoral estate with alpacas, pygmy goats, horses and other farmyard animals, a million miles from Downey Jr’s former hell-raiser days. The actor spent a year in prison and his father gave him cannabis aged six. So how did he end up rescuing the comic book giant’s Hollywood empire, not once but twice?

Robert Downey Jr was once considered a lost cause during a drug-fuelled period in the 1990s but dragged himself back from the brink to become a superstar.

The former hell-raiser drove Marvel’s initial march to global box-office domination and has now been re-recruited to propel the franchise into a new era of similar success.

It is a vastly expensive gamble for Disney, which owns the studio, and the latest validation of Downey Jr’s unique star credentials after an extraordinary journey from prison to the pinnacle of the entertainment industry that is without an exact precedent in film history. “This is one of the great comeback stories of all time,” said Jonathan Kuntz, a film historian at the UCLA school of theatre, film and television.

Marvel’s recent difficulties — underwhelming box office performances and creative malaise — pale in comparison with the lows that Downey Jr endured at his nadir.

His father, Robert Downey Sr, was a director known for subversive comedies including 1970’s Pound, which starred a five-year-old junior in his first film role.

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