Robert Downey Jr. Opens Up About Life After Iron Man, Kung Fu Fighting and Managing a Menagerie in Dolittle
JANUARY 3, 2020 – 5:00 AM
By AMY SPENCER
https://static.parade.com/wp-content...Opener-FTR.jpg
(courtesy Universal)
When Robert Downey Jr. was preparing for his new role in Dolittle, a movie in which he plays a doctor who lives with a house full of animals—and talks with them—he began to wonder, “How does anyone relate to this guy?” And then he looked out the window of his home in Malibu, Calif., and saw his alpaca Fuzzy looking back at him.
In addition to his wife of 14 years, Susan, and their two kids, son Exton, 7, and daughter Avri, 5, Downey lives with dozens of animals they’ve taken in over the past 10 years. There are pigs (kunekunes, a New Zealand breed), Oreo cows (with that distinctive white belt), pygmy goats, a larger rescue goat named Cutie Boots, a bunch of chickens and two cats, Montgomery and D’Artagnan. “I was like, ‘Oh, yeah,’” he says with a laugh. “‘You’re completely surrounded by animals!’”
Today Downey, 54, is in the Venice office of his production company, Team Downey, which he founded with Susan, 46, in 2010. He’s dressed in a classically eccentric outfit: a black brocade suit over a Bruce Lee T-shirt and a pair of black suede high-top sneakers, all chosen yesterday, he says. “I’m a guy who lays out my clothes the night before. Eliminates morning confusion.” There’s certainly nothing confusing about Downey’s career: It’s full of iconic characters from pop culture and history, like Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chaplin and Iron Man. And now Downey is stepping into the shoes of another famous man in this month’s Dolittle (in theaters Jan. 17).
The new movie is born from the classic 1920s book series by Hugh Lofting, but Downey based his Dr. John Dolittle on a real Welsh physician from 19th century Wales named William Price. He was “a very, very odd character” who was into a “neo-druidic” movement that promoted connection among all creatures, says Downey.
The new film begins after the doctor loses his wife to a tragedy, leading him to develop a case of anxiety and agoraphobia. But when Queen Victoria (Jessie Buckley) falls gravely ill and his help is needed to find a cure, Dolittle’s animals spur him into action because they know “it’s something he needs to do to clear up his traumatic past,” Downey says. Ultimately, he says, the film is about communication and empathy, “to seek to understand and to be understood.”
As seasoned an actor as he is, the role brought new challenges: Downey had to learn a Welsh accent for the part (“the hardest accent on Earth,” he says) with the help of a dialect coach. And he needed to act with an entirely computer-generated animal cast. Emma Thompson, Rami Malek, John Cena, Tom Holland, Craig Robinson, Selena Gomez, Octavia Spencer and others provide the voices of the brood, including Polynesia the macaw, Chee-Chee the gorilla, Yoshi the polar bear, Plimpton the ostrich, Dab-Dab the duck, Fleming the mouse and Barry the tiger.
Robert Downey’s Career Highs and Lows
https://static.parade.com/wp-content...th-Dad-FTR.jpg
Downey with his father, filmmaker Robert Downey Sr., in 2008 (Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images)
Downey’s love of animals dates back to his childhood. “My dad always named our pets after directors…well, and one president,” remembers Downey. “So we had George Washington. Then we had [Stanley] Kubrick, we had [Preston] Sturges. Sturges and I were pretty close; he was a Yorkshire terrier.”
The actor was raised with his older sister, Allyson, in Manhattan and Queens, New York, by their father, Robert Downey Sr., an actor and filmmaker, and mother, Elsie, an actress, who died in 2014. Downey was introduced to moviemaking at a young age, precociously appearing in one of his father’s films at age 5. But along with his early exposure to filmmaking came an early exposure to drugs, as Downey famously smoked marijuana with his father at around 8 years old, planting the seeds for his later drug addiction.
https://static.parade.com/wp-content...th-Mom-FTR.jpg
Downey with his mother, Elsie, in 2009 (GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP via Getty Images)
In the mid-’70s, his parents divorced and he moved to various places, from Connecticut and upstate New York to Southern California and back. And as a young man, he had a run of odd jobs—at a shoe store, a sandwich shop and as a busboy—while also attending acting programs and auditioning for roles.
He’ll never forget being 17 and making $140 a week performing at the Geva Theatre in Rochester, New York. “I’m riding around on a 10-speed bike—it was like a $107 Panasonic, I think, and I could afford it ’cause it was bottom-tier. And I was listening on a Walkman to Phil Collins, just going, like, ‘Man, I’m really making something of my life here!’”
In those early years, “I had plenty of rejection,” he admits. But being raised in the city “makes you super-resilient,” a trait that kept him going. And two opposing forces—the drive he had to succeed in his career and the temptation to party—would prove to be a push and a pull for him for the next 20 years.
He did have some positive mentors during those days, including ’80s teen idol Matt Dillon. “He took me under his wing a little bit,” says Downey, who calls Dillon “one of the most well-read people I’ve ever met.” Downey also began working with other famed actors of his era, making an early name for himself in the 1980s alongside members of the so-called Brat Pack, the group of actors that loosely included Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Demi Moore and Ally Sheedy. He appeared in 1985’s Weird Science (“Anthony Michael Hall and I are still close,” he says), co-starred in The Pick-up Artist with Ringwald, then played cocaine-addicted party boy Julian in Less Than Zero alongside McCarthy, a role that both amplified his career and his drug habit.
https://static.parade.com/wp-content...-Indio-FTR.jpg
Downey with his oldest son, Indio, in 2011 (Beverly News/Shutterstock)
The next two decades brought both highs and lows. His starring turn in Chaplin (1992) earned him his first Academy Award nomination, and he had his son, Indio, now 26 (with his first wife of 12 years, Deborah Falconer); he also saw his drug addiction spiral, leading to multiple arrests, stints in jail and a state prison and stays at substance abuse treatment centers. But his determination to succeed prevailed as he hit more career milestones, nominated for both an Emmy (for his role as Ally’s love interest, Larry Paul, on TV’s Ally McBeal) and a second Oscar (for his role in the comedy Tropic Thunder). By the early 2000s, Downey got clean and fell in love, and before the close of the decade, he was offered a role that would change the course of his career: genius playboy Tony Stark in Iron Man.
