Robert John Downey Jr. (born April 4, 1965), also known as RDJ, is an American actor. His films as a leading actor have grossed over $14 billion worldwide, making him one of the highest-grossing actors of all time. In 2008, Downey was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
At the age of five, Downey made his acting debut in his father Robert Downey Sr.’s 1970 film Pound, and then, at seven, appeared in the surrealist Western film Greaser’s Palace (1972). He went to Stagedoor Manor, a summer acting camp in upstate New York, when he was eleven and twelve. Downey’s parents divorced in 1977, when he was twelve. He went and lived with his mother in a fifth-floor apartment in New York. After a few years, Downey went to live with his father and began attending Santa Monica High School, but dropped out in 1982.
At the age of 17, he moved back to New York to pursue an acting career full-time. Downey worked a number of different jobs to support himself while going to auditions, including clearing tables at Central Falls restaurant, working in a shoe store, and performing as “living art” at the nightclub Area. Meanwhile, Downey got a few parts in local theater and off-Broadway productions. He got his first credited film role in the 1983 film Baby It’s You; however, his scenes ended up being cut.
Downey began building upon his theater roles, making his debut on stage in 1983 at the Geva Theatre Center in Alms for the Middle Class for a three-week run. He also performed in the short-lived off-Broadway musical American Passion at the Joyce Theater in 1983. In 1984, Downey got a part in the film Firstborn, where he met Sarah Jessica Parker, and the pair started dating. In 1985, he was part of the new, younger cast hired for Saturday Night Live. Downey has said that Anthony Michael Hall, whom he had met and become friends with on the set of his Weird Science, helped him get the audition. However, he and most of the new crew were dropped and replaced following a year of poor ratings and criticism of the new cast’s comedic talents.
That same year, Downey had a dramatic acting breakthrough when he played James Spader’s sidekick in Tuff Turf and then a bully in John Hughes’s Weird Science. Molly Ringwald wanted him for the role of Duckie in John Hughes’s 1986 film Pretty in Pink, but the part went to Jon Cryer. He went on to star with Ringwald in his first lead role in The Pick-up Artist (1987). Because of these and other coming-of-age films Downey did during the 1980s, he is sometimes named as a member of the Brat Pack. Downey moved to Hollywood and lived with fellow actors Billy Zane, who later appeared with Downey in Only You (1994); Sarah Jessica Parker; and Kiefer Sutherland, who starred with Downey in 1969 (1988).
In 1987, Downey played Julian Wells, a drug-addicted rich boy whose life rapidly spirals out of his control, in the film version of the Bret Easton Ellis novel Less than Zero. His performance, described by Janet Maslin in The New York Times as “desperately moving,” was widely praised, though Downey has said that for him “the role was like the ghost of Christmas Future” since his drug habit resulted in his becoming an “exaggeration of the character” in real life. Soon after completing the film, Downey went into rehab for the first time; the episode would be followed by a number of interventions and stints in rehab over the next decade prior to his 1996 arrest. Zero drove Downey into films with bigger budgets and names, such as Chances Are (1989) with Cybill Shepherd and Ryan O’Neal, Air America (1990) with Mel Gibson, and Soapdish (1991) with Sally Field, Kevin Kline, Cathy Moriarty, and Whoopi Goldberg.
Below is a collection of 22 amazing photos of a young Robert Downey Jr. during the 1980s:
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