Highest paid
actor in Hollywood 2015
Robert Downey, Jr.
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The World's Highest-Paid Actors 2015: Robert
Downey Jr. Leads with $80 Million Haul. I'm a writer at 24 Entertainment
covering media and news, with a focus on the movie business. From the world's
highest-paid actors to models, authors and rappers, I keep tabs on the glitz
and glamour of the Hollywood hustle. Aug 4, 2015
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Robert Downey, Jr.Born in New York City on April 4, 1965, Robert Downey Jr. began acting as a young child. He made his first film appearances and was a cast member onSaturday Night Live in the 1980s, but his growing success was marred by years of struggles with drug abuse. Eventually turning his life around, he earned a resurgence of critical and popular acclaim, and is considered one of Hollywood's A-list actors.
Famed actor Robert Downey Jr. was
born on April 4, 1965, in New York City, the son of the avant-garde filmmaker
Robert Downey Sr., who is best known for the 1969 film Putney Swope.
Downey began acting as a young child. His mother, Elsie, was an actress who
instilled in her son a love of performing. Raised in Greenwich Village with his
older sister, Alison, Downey made his film debut playing a puppy in his
father's film, Pound (1970), in which actors played dogs. He
would go on to have small parts in several more of his father's films.
Downey's parents divorced when he
was 13, and the young actor ended up living in Los Angeles, California, with
his father. At the age of 16, however, he dropped out of high school and was on
the move again, relocating to New York to live with his mother.
Downey made his earliest feature film
appearances in such films as Baby, It's You (1983), Firstborn (1984), Weird
Science (1985) and Back to School(1986). From 1985 to '86,
he was a regular cast member of Saturday Night Live, NBC's popular
sketch-comedy program.
Downey's first leading role on the
big screen was a charming womanizer inThe Pick-up Artist (1987), a
romantic comedy co-starring Molly Ringwald that was written and directed by
James Toback. His breakthrough performance came in 1987 with Less Than
Zero (1987), in which he co-starred with Andrew McCarthy. Downey
played the party loving, cocaine-addicted Julian Wells in the film.
A particular high point in Downey's
career came in 1993, when he was nominated for an Academy Award (best actor)
for his performance in Chaplin(1992), directed by Richard
Attenborough. In the highly acclaimed film, which didn't go over nearly as well
with audiences as with critics, Downey nimbly portrayed the legendary Charlie
Chaplin from ages 19 to 83. The role displayed his dramatic range as well as
his considerable talent for physical comedy. By this time, the 27-year-old
Downey had come to be seen as one of the most gifted actors of his generation,
but he had also earned a reputation as a troubled and controversial figure in
Hollywood.
In the wake of his critical success
with Chaplin, Downey anchored a documentary about the 1992
presidential election, The Last Party. In 1994, he appeared in the
romantic comedy Only You, as well as in Oliver Stone's acclaimed
but controversial Natural Born Killers. The following year, the
actor starred in the period film Restoration alongside Meg
Ryan and Sam Neill; an updated film version of Richard III (1995),
co-starring Ian McKellen and Annette Bening; and the Jodie Foster-directed Home
for the Holidays, also starring Holly Hunter.
Downey's personal life had expanded,
too. In May 1992, he married actress Deborah Falconer. Two years later, the
couple had a son, Indio, naming friend and actor, Anthony Michael Hall, as the
boy's godfather.
If Downey was ever really grounded
by his new status as husband and father, it was short-lived. In June 1996, the
actor was stopped by police after driving naked in his Porsche on Sunset
Boulevard, and found not only to be without clothes, but in possession of
cocaine, heroine and a .357 Magnum. Less than a month later, and just a few
hours before he was slated to be charged, Downey ran afoul of the law again
after he was found passed out in a neighbor's house.
Downey's trial, originally set for
late January, was delayed for several months while his lawyers negotiated with
prosecutors. In March 2001, the two sides failed to reach a plea bargain, and
the case was set for a preliminary hearing at the end of April. On April 24,
2001, Downey was arrested for allegedly being under the influence of an
undisclosed "stimulant." Downey's personal life was in turmoil, too,
as Falconer sued him for divorce in 2004.
Despite his troubled history with
the law, these days, Downey has a much more stable home life. He married
producer Susan Levin in 2005, and the couple welcomed their first child
together on February 7, 2012. They named their son Exton Elias. On November 4,
2014, Downey and Levin welcomed their second child, a daughter named Avri.
Since then, Downey's life has
significantly turned around. He became a husband again in 2005, when he married
actress Susan Levin, whom he'd med two years before on the set of the thriller, Gothika.
He's an ardent student of Wing Chung kung fu, and through the support of his
family and friends, he's been able to stay clean.
One of the people to play a key role
in his turnaround is Mel Gibson, with whom Downey co-starred in Air
America (1990). Gibson stuck by his friend's side, even as Downey's
life was completely unraveling, and when Downey was unable to get something as
routine as an insurance bond due to his past troubles with the law, Gibson
found him work, casting him in the 2003 filmThe Singing Detective. The
two actors remain close friends today.
Also in 2003, Downey starred
opposite Halle Berry in Gothika, which did better at the box office
than it did with the critics. He continued to dedicate himself to his craft,
playing a supporting role in the critically acclaimed Good Night, and
Good Luck (2005) and the lead in the independent drama A Guide
to Recognizing Your Saints (2006), which he also co-produced. In Zodiac(2007),
Downey played a journalist who gets wrapped up in the hunt for the infamous
Zodiac Killer.
In 2008, Downey transformed from an
often critically admired actor to a box-office star. He played the wealthy
industrialist-turned-crime fighter Tony Stark in the smash hit Iron Man (2008),
which grossed more than $318 million. Taking a huge risk, Downey then starred
in the comedy Tropic Thunder(2008) with Ben Stiller and Jack Black;
he played a white actor pretending to be a black actor in this war movie spoof.
His efforts received mostly positive reviews, with Variety magazine's
Todd McCarthy stating that "the audacity of Downey's performance" was
one of "the best reasons to see the film." Downey garnered a number
of accolades for his performance in Tropic Thunder, including an
Oscar (best performance by an actor in a supporting role), Golden Globe (best
performance by an actor in a supporting role in a motion picture) and Screen
Actors Guild (outstanding performance by a male actor in a supporting role)
award nominations
Recent Work
More recently, Downey co-starred
with Jamie Foxx in The Soloist (2009), which tells the story
about the friendship between a Los Angeles journalist (Downey) and a homeless
Juilliard-trained musician (Foxx). The film registered a respectable showing at
the box-office and earned the praise from critics, who lauded Downey and Foxx
for their performances.
Demonstrating he isn't afraid of
blockbusters (or English accents), Downey starred in the Guy Ritchie directed Sherlock
Holmes in 2009. The film co-starred Jude Law as Dr. John Watson. In
addition, 2010 returned Downey to superhero status with the second installment
of the Iron Man franchise. The crime fighting picked up again
in 2012, when Downey's Iron Man character was back in action
in The Avengers, a movie that featured a bevy of Hollywood talent,
including Don Cheadle (Colonel James "Rhodey" Rhodes), Mark
Ruffalo (Hulk), Samuel Jackson (Nick Fury) and Scarlett Johansson
(the Black Widow), among others. Downey was back playing the popular Tony
Stark in 2013's Iron Man 3. In 2014, he starred as sharp city
lawyer Hank Palmer opposite Robert Duvall as his father Judge Joseph Palmer in
the drama The Judge.
His Tony Stark/Iron Man character
remains in high demand. Downey returned to the role for 2015's Avengers:
Age of Ultron. He is also set to play the part for the next installment of
the Captain America film series. While promotingAge of
Ultron, however, Downey made headlines for walking out of an interview with
British journalist Kristnan Guru-Murthy. The actor had been upset with some
questions that Gury-Murthy had been asking him. As he later told to radio
personality Howard Stern, Downey thought that Guru-Murthy was "a
bottom-feeding muckraker" for his prying questions.
For his part, Downey isn't taking
this professional and personal resurgence for granted. "I think part of my
destiny has to be realizing that I'm not the poster boy for drug abuse,"
he told reporters in 2005. "I'm just this guy who has a really strong
sense of wanting home and wanting foundation and having not had it, I now
choose to create it."
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