Robert Downey Jr. is one powerful man.
He’s practically the dad of the MCU, as he’s led the franchise for over a decade in his role as Iron Man. You can even thank him for getting some of your favorite Marvel actors on board.
RELATED STORIES
Come learn more about this mysterious actor with these 10+ facts you didn’t expect.
1. He was a child actor.
Aww! Baby Robert. He starred in Pound in 1970 when he was only five years old.
The movie was actually a family affair since it was written and directed by his father, Robert Downey Sr.
2. He convinced Chris Evans to take the role of Captain America.
The actor’s anxiety caused him to turn down the role of Captain America, twice.
“Getting the [Captain America] offer felt to me like the epitome of temptation,” he told The Hollywood Reporter .
“The ultimate job offer, on the biggest scale. I’m supposed to say no to this thing. It felt like the right thing to do.”
In the end, Robert stepped in to give him a gentle nudge.
“I’ve been in hundreds of scenes with this guy,” Chris said about Iron Man.
“Nobody laughs more than him. Sometimes he makes me self-conscious, like, ‘Should I be more fun?’
3. He also encouraged Mark Ruffalo to become the Hulk.
Ruffalo told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show :
“I got a call from Downey, it must’ve made it to him that I was hemming and hawing, and he just simply said, ‘Ruffalo, let’s go. We got this.'”
4. His wife, Susan, was not attracted to him when they first met.
The couple has been going strong for over two decades, but Susan told Harper’s Bazaar that she felt zip when she first met him on the set of Gothika (she was a producer).
“Not even a little bit. The main thing I remember about meeting him was thinking how strange he was.”
Everything changed when he asked her out to dinner a few weeks into filming.
The pair fell in love and got married. Today, they have two children together: a son, Exton, who was born in 2012, and a daughter, Avri, who was born in 2014.
5. He dated Sarah Jessica Parker for seven years.
The pair met when they were both 18 years old and moved in together after only eight weeks of dating.
They were the “It” couple of the ’80s. But sadly, it just couldn’t last.
Robert blames their split on his drug addiction.
“I was so selfish,” Robert admitted .
“I liked to drink, and I had a drug problem, and that didn’t jibe with Sarah Jessica, because it is the furthest thing from what she is.”
6. He was roommates with Kiefer Sutherland.
These two actors lived together in the ’80s after meeting on set.
Kiefer was even a shoulder for Downey to lean on when he went through his breakup with Sarah Jessica Parker from Sex and the City .
7. He has a hilarious beef battle with Ryan Reynolds.
Is there any actor that Ryan doesn’t have a troll war with??
Perhaps Ryan was bitter about not getting into the MCU since he shared this video of him eating a cookie with Robert’s face on it.
“#touche” Robert commented on the vid.
8. He went to school with Sean Penn and Charlie Sheen.
During the ’80s, all of these award-winning actors were classmates and friends at Santa Monica High School!
We’d put money on the Brat Pack being the coolest guys in school.
9. He used to struggle with severe addiction.
Things spiraled out of control for the actor when he first made it big in Hollywood.
When police stopped him for speeding in 1996, they found different kinds of drugs and even a gun.
After this, he took several trips to rehab and even landed in jail for under a year.
After hitting true rock bottom, he checked into rehab and got his life back on the right track.
He’s been sober ever since.
10. In 2014, he was charged with felony drug possession.
“He’s his mother’s son and my son, and he’s come up the chasm much quicker than we did,” Downey told Vanity Fair .
“Pick a dysfunction and it’s a family problem.”
11. His son, Indio, has struggled with substance abuse problems.
Robert had Indio with Deborah Falconer, his first wife of 12 years.
Indio is part of the band, The Dose. He plays guitar and does vocals with his bandmate, Ralph Alexander.
12. He owns his own production company with his wife.
It’s called Team Downey, and their first feature film was The Judge .
“It was the least likely first Team Downey project, but there was something in the process that was so provocative,” he told Vanity Fair , adding that he would tear up during work sessions.
13. He wants to turn the *Sherlock Holmes* franchise into the next MCU.
The actor has high hopes for the franchise, which has its third moving coming out on December 22, 2021.
“We’re not repeaters, we don’t want to just try to do what’s been done somewhere else. But I think the model itself has become much more dimensionalized than it was before,” he said during the Fast Company’s Innovation Festival.
14. He accidentally broke Halle Berry’s arm.
This happened when the pair were filming the 2003 thriller Gothika .
”It wasn’t like I was trying to fall 50 feet and just fell wrong or did something crazy,” she told Yahoo .
“I was shooting a scene with Robert and he grabbed my arm the wrong way and broke it,” she continued.
It’s been said that Berry still hasn’t forgiven Robert for breaking her arm.
“She didn’t think he was sorry enough. He didn’t even send flowers. Whenever she sees him in town she won’t talk to him,” a source said.
