hollywoodland
Robert Downey Jr.: Running on Empty, Rock Bottom, and Ironclad Resolve
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In this episode
The man who would be Iron Man was once an uninsurable, unreliable actor who lived many years at the bottom in a haze of drugs and alcohol. His transformation into the highest-paid actor in Hollywood is truly one of the most remarkable stories in the City of Angels.
Sources
Robert Downey Jr, The Fall and Rise of the Comeback Kid, by Ben Falk
Robert Downey Jr.: Return of the hero (Telegraph)
Been Up, Been Down. Now? Super (NY Times)
Robert Downey Jr: from lost cause to highest-paid Hollywood actor (The Guardian)
Robert Downey Jr. Gets 3 Years in Prison (LA Times)
A Troubled Actor’s Rude Awakening (LA Times)
Robert Downey Jr. Is the World’s Highest Paid Actor (Variety)
Robert Downey Jr.: Back from the Brink (Time)
The Tao of Robert Downey Jr. (Rolling Stone)
Hitting Bottom (People)
Susan Downey: Iron Woman (Harper’s Bizarre)
The Woman Behind the Burger King Incident that Saved Robert Downey Jr.’s Career (Suggest)
Robert Downey Jr.’s Weird Science of Acting (Rolling Stone)
To Hell and Back with Robert Downey Jr. (Rolling Stone)
The Marvel Decade: How Superheroes Ruled the Cinema in the 2010s (Popular Mechanics)
The World’s Highest Paid Actors 2015: Robert Downey Jr. Leads with $80 Million Haul (Forbes)
The Robert Downey Jr. Luxury List (Pursuitist)
Heroin Becomes the Cocaine of the ‘90s (Entertainment Weekly)
My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman (Netflix)
Scarcely out of Their Teens, Sarah Parker and Robert Downey Play House in Hollywood (People)
Downey’s Brightening Prospects Turn Cloudy Again (NY Times)
The Actor’s Addiction (Washington Post)
Credits
Hosted by Jake Brennan.
Written by Zeth Lundy.
Copy edited by Pat Healy.
Scored and mixed by Colin Fleming.
Additional music and score elements by Ryan Spraker.
*illustrations by Avi Spivak @avispivak