Robert Downey Jr. has lived an extraordinary life and continues to amaze the world with all the different things he’s capable of.
While most people may only know him for his role as the title character in Iron Man by Marvel Studios, Downey has done so much more than just that one role.
Over the course of his career, Robert Downey Jr. has made millions of dollars.
Robert Downey Jr. Net Worth
Robert Downey Jr. has a net worth of $300 million, which has been earned over decades of working in film and theater.
Downey has made the majority of his money from Marvel’s Iron Man and Avengers movie series.
Marvel pays its actors based on how long they’ve been with the studio.
This is why Robert Downey Jr. was “only” paid $500,000 for the first Iron Man movie.
For his second Iron Man movie, which made $623 million internationally, Downey was paid $10 million.
Reprising his role as Tony Stark/Iron man in the first Avengers movie, Downey’s base pay was $10 million, but through back-end deals, he ended up making about $50 million.
The same deal was struck for Iron Man 3, which was the character’s last solo movie.
Robert Downey Jr. also made $50 million from this movie, which grossed $1.2 billion.
In the Avengers sequel, Avengers: Age of Ultron, nobody is certain exactly how much Robert Downey Jr. made, but it would have been between $50 million and $80 million.
The movie that followed, Captain America: Civil War, earned Downey another $50 million for his role as Tony Stark/Iron Man, plus a $5 million bonus for helping the movie perform better than other Captain America movies.
He made additional back-end deals on that appearance as well.
In total, Robert Downey Jr. walked away with about $64 million.
For his appearance in Spider-Man: Homecoming, Robert Downey Jr. made about $1 million per minute of screentime, leaving him with a total of $10 million to $15 million.
The movie made about $880 million globally.
Avengers: Infinity War made more than $2 billion worldwide, and Robert Downey Jr. made at least $75 million after the profit-sharing deals.
His final movie in the role of Iron Man was Avengers: End Game.
He made $75 million, plus 8% of the nearly $2.8 billion that the movie grossed.
Early Career
Robert Downey Jr. began acting at a very early age.
He dropped out of high school at Santa Monica High School to move in with his mother, Elsie Ford, who lived in New York City.
He first began acting in theatrical productions before beginning his movie career.
One of his first movies was Baby, It’s You, which premiered in 1983.
The following year brought the movie Firstborn.
In 1985, Downey starred in Weird Science. This was the same year that Robert Downey Jr. became a regular cast member on Saturday Night Live.
Due to the poor ratings of the show at the time, everyone who was hired in 1985 was fired in 1986.
It was during this time that Robert Downey Jr. was also working on the film Back to School.
In 1987, Robert Downey Jr. got his first leading role in The Pick-Up Artist.
He also starred in Less Than Zero in the same year, in which his character was addicted to cocaine.
Downey believes this was the point where his own drug addiction began to spin out of control.
Despite his struggle with his addiction, Robert Downey Jr. had made a name for himself.
Between Less Than Zero and his next best hit, Downey appeared in six other movies, including Johnny Be Good, That’s Adequate, True Believer, and Too Much Sun.
Robert Downey Jr. would make waves in 1991 with Soapdish, which also starred Whoopi Goldberg, Kevin Kline, Carrier Fisher, and Sally Field.
The movie made more than $36 million across North America.
The year after Soapdish was released, Robert Downey Jr. would appear in another hit, Chaplin.
Downey had landed himself the role of Charles Spencer Chaplin.
Chaplin is a critically acclaimed biographical piece about the silent film superstar, Charlie Chaplin.
His Struggle With Drug Addiction
Robert Downey Jr was introduced to drugs by his father at an extremely young age.
His father had him smoking marijuana at the age of six.
He claims he was addicted by the time he was eight years old.
Downey’s childhood was surrounded by his father’s drug addiction and his own.
By the time Downey was going into his 20s, he was a functioning drug addict.
Until 1987, he had kept his drug use separate from his work.
This changed after working on Less Than Zero.
The character he played was a cocaine-addicted partier.
Downey felt that the character was an exaggeration of himself at first.
During the movie’s production, Downey began to hit his drug of choice harder.
By the end of production, Downey had become an exaggeration of his character.
Despite being in many different movies, Downey’s drug problem was getting progressively worse.
Over the years, Robert Downey Jr. had been caught with marijuana, cocaine, and heroin multiple times.
He was constantly in and out of rehab, but nothing seemed to help.
In 1996, Robert Downey Jr. was stopped by a cop while driving naked in his Porsche.
He also had heroin, cocaine, and an unloaded .357 Magnum in the car with him.
Things were not looking good for Downey as he entered the courtroom.
Downey told the judge that he knew how bad the drugs were for him, but he couldn’t stop.
In 2001, he was arrested for being under the influence of cocaine and a controlled substance, Valium.
By 2004, Downey’s addiction had lost him everything.
His wife, Deborah Falconer, had left him that year.
No film companies wanted to hire him due to the high insurance costs that were needed in order to hire him.
He needed to change.
His Road To Recovery
After years of being addicted to multiple substances, Downey’s last straw was when his wife filed for divorce and took their son with her.
Robert Downey Jr. had lost everything that mattered to him.
He knew he had to change.
Downey’s time in prison was filled with targeted attacks.
He awoke many times to find himself getting beaten and lying in a pool of his own blood.
Downey has said that he can’t even speak about the worst parts of prison.
After he was released, he found that no film companies wanted to work with him.
The insurance bonds they would have had to pay were too costly, but that didn’t stop Mel Gibson from paying for the bonds himself and hiring Downey anyway.
Robert Downey Jr. has described his time addicted to drugs as a “20-year coma”.
Many people who are addicted to drugs don’t get live long enough to fix their mistakes, but those who cared about Robert Downey Jr. personally were not going to allow him to waste his potential.
Downey still struggled with substance abuse for years, but what finally got him to quit them for good was the requirement that his then-girlfriend, Susan Levin, set before she would even consider marrying him.
He had to be done with drugs for good before she would marry him.
Downey took this as another form of motivation to improve himself.
He began taking his recovery much more seriously.
Downey took part in multiple 12-step programs and began to practice meditation.
During this time, he also began studying a form of martial arts called Wing Chun Kung Fu.
This martial art style originated in Southern China about 300 years ago.
Wing Chun focuses on a combination of physics and biomechanics, teaching students the importance of these sciences and balance.
Robert Downey Jr.’s Musical Career
Although Robert Downey Jr. is best known as an action-packed superhero, he also has a fantastic singing voice.
You wouldn’t expect the wisecracking actor to have such a well-trained set of vocal cords, but Downey’s talent doesn’t end at acting.
Robert Downey Jr. has plenty of experience as a singer and songwriter.
In 2004, he released an album called The Futurist.
Downey wrote the songs, sang, and played piano on the album.
This was his first time performing his own songs, but not his first time singing.
While on the show Ally McBeal, Downey sang Joni Mitchell covers and Christmas songs.
Robert Downey Jr. sounds like a cross between Billy Joel and Ian Gillan of Deep Purple.
His soulful voice and gentle piano playing were perfect for Christmas music.
There was a time when Robert Downey Jr. even performed with Sting.
Their most popular performance was Sting’s hit song Every Breath You Take.
While Robert Downey Jr.’s musical career hasn’t expanded in 20 years, he has still done incredible things with his life.
Although he struggled the most during his musical years, his talent never faltered.
Even while drugs were consuming his life and brain, he could still manage to create beautiful music.
Playing the piano as well as he does and later writing an entire album is no small feat.
In Captain America: Civil War, Jeremy Renner’s character, Hawkeye, comments about Tony Stark being “The Futurist”.
While everyone may not have been around to hear the height of Robert Downey Jr.’s musical career, those who did have never forgotten it.
His Relationships
Until Robert Downey Jr.’s most recent relationship, he has had a rocky history when it comes to relationships and romance.
Three of Downey’s relationships were highly notable.
After acting alongside each other in the 1984 movie Firstborn, Robert Downey Jr. began dating Sarah Jessica Parker, who went on to star in Sex in the City.
Although the two actors were madly in love with each other, Robert Downey Jr.’s addiction was stronger than his love for Parker.
Parker had to muster up the courage to leave Downey, who was too deep into drugs to be in a healthy relationship.
Downey doesn’t blame Parker for leaving him in 1991 and admits that he was being selfish, putting his drug addiction above the person he claimed to have loved.
Robert Downey Jr.’s second notable relationship was with Deborah Falconer.
They got married after having been together for only 42 days.
The couple became husband and wife on May 29th, 1992.
In 1993, Robert Downey Jr. and Deborah Falconer had their son, Indio.
Fatherhood had not slowed down Downey’s addictions.
In 2001, Falconer took Indio and left Downey while he was once again in a rehabilitation center.
Their divorce was finalized in 2004.
Downey had just begun to take his addiction more seriously when he started working on the 2003 movie, Gothika and met producer Susan Levin.
He hadn’t quite kicked his addiction when the two began dating.
Levin told Downey that she would not marry him until he had kicked his addictions completely.
At Levin’s 30th birthday, Downey proposed to her.
They were married in August of 2005.
Friends of the Downeys, such as Joel Silver, claim that Susan Downey keeps Robert Downey Jr. in line.
Downey loves her firm and supportive nature.
Downey’s Awards And Nominations
Robert Downey Jr. is a highly accomplished actor.
He has 43 different awards and has been nominated 121 times.
Downey has had his name announced at award shows 164 times so far in his career.
The first award-winning movie of Downey’s was Chaplin in 1992.
Downey’s first Chaplin nomination was for best actor from the Awards Circuit Community Awards.
In 1993, the movie got many more nominations and awards.
Chaplin was given six other nominations that year.
Downey also received the award for best actor at the BAFTA Awards.
In 1994, Downey won two awards for his movies Short Cuts and Hearts and Souls.
Short Cuts won a special award at the Golden Globes.
Hearts and Souls won Downey an award for best actor at the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Horror Films.
Downey’s performance on Ally McBeal was recognized by multiple awards shows in 2001.
His appearance on the comedy show in 1997 won him an award for outstanding performance by a male actor in a comedy series at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
The show was also nominated at the TV Guide Awards and the Television Critics Association Awards the same year.
For awards, 2008 was an excellent year for Downey.
His comedy movie co-starring Ben Stiller and Jack Black, Tropic Thunder, was a hit.
That and Iron Man earned Downey Actor of the Year at the Central Ohio Film Critics Association.
Downey has earned the majority of his awards through the Iron Man and Avengers movies.
His role as Tony Stark in eleven films by Marvel Studios has earned him about a third of all the nominations and awards he has won over the course of his career.
Playing this character has earned him multiple Best Actor awards and Best Fight Scene awards.
Downey’s Newest Project
Robert Downey Jr. has been an actor, singer, songwriter, and comedian.
He has worked in theater, television, and blockbuster movies.
Downey has done it all and has now decided to dip his toes into the world of movie production alongside his wife, Susan Downey.
Susan Downey had already had experience producing movies, which is how she and Robert met.
The production company, Team Downey, was founded in 2010, as a part of Warner Bros.
In 2016, Team Downey decided to leave Warner Bros.
Team Downey’s first movie produced was The Judge in 2014.
In 2020, the production company came out with Dolittle, in which Robert Downey Jr. stars as Dr. Dolittle.
However, the movie got less than stellar reviews.
Movies aren’t all that Team Downey produces.
They are currently producing a television show for HBO Max called Perry Mason.
It is a dramatic retelling of the stories surrounding author Erle Stanley Gardner’s fictional lawyer.
Team Downey has also produced a television series for Netflix called Sweet Tooth.
Sweet Tooth is a character from DC Comics who is forced to leave his home forest after disaster strikes.
He ends up finding other human-animal hybrids who are all trying to figure out where they came from.
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