Career troubles

Downey at the premiere of Air America, 1990

From 1996 through 2001, Downey was arrested numerous times on charges related to drugs
including cocaine, heroin, and marijuana[44] and went through drug treatment programs
unsuccessfully, explaining in 1999 to a judge: "It's like I have a shotgun in my mouth, and I've got my
finger on the trigger, and I like the taste of the gun metal." He explained his relapses by claiming to
have been addicted to drugs since the age of eight, due to the fact that his father, also an addict
previously, had been giving them to him.[45]
In April 1996, Downey was arrested for possession of heroin, cocaine, and an unloaded .357
Magnum handgun while he was speeding down Sunset Boulevard. A month later, while on parole,
he trespassed into a neighbor's home while under the influence of a controlled substance, and fell
asleep in one of the beds.[46][47] He received three years of probation and was ordered to undergo
compulsory drug testing. In 1997, he missed one of the court-ordered drug tests, and had to spend
six months in the Los Angeles County jail.[48]
After Downey missed another required drug test in 1999, he was arrested once more. Despite
Downey's lawyer, Robert Shapiro, assembling the same team of lawyers that successfully
defended O.J. Simpson during his criminal trial for murder,[45] Downey was sentenced to a three-year
prison term at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison in Corcoran,
California. At the time of the 1999 arrest, all of Downey's film projects had wrapped and were close
to release. He had also been hired to provide the voice of the devil on the NBC animated television
series God, the Devil and Bob, but was fired when he failed to show up for rehearsals. [49][50]
After spending nearly a year in the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison,
Downey, on condition of posting a $5,000 bail, was unexpectedly freed when a judge ruled that his
collective time in incarceration facilities (spawned from the initial 1996 arrests) had qualified him for
early release.[17] A week after his 2000 release, Downey joined the cast of the hit television
series Ally McBeal, playing the new love interest of Calista Flockhart's title character.[51] His
performance was praised and the following year he was nominated for an Emmy Award in
the Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series category and won a Golden Globe for Best
Supporting Actor in a mini-series or television film.[52][53] He also appeared as a writer and singer
on Vonda Shepard's Ally McBeal: For Once in My Life album, and he sang with Sting a duet of
"Every Breath You Take" in an episode of the series. Despite the apparent success, Downey
claimed that his performance on the series was overrated and said, "It was my lowest point in terms
of addictions. At that stage, I didn't give a fuck whether I ever acted again." [28] In January 2001,
Downey was scheduled to play the role of Hamlet in a Los Angeles stage production directed by Mel
Gibson.[54]
Before the end of his first season on Ally McBeal, over the Thanksgiving 2000 holiday, Downey was
arrested when his room at Merv Griffin's Hotel and Givenchy Spa in Palm Springs, California was
searched by the police, who were responding to an anonymous 911 call. Downey was under the
influence of a controlled substance and in possession of cocaine and Valium.[55][56] Despite the fact
that, if convicted, he would have faced a prison sentence of up to four years and eight months, he
signed on to appear in at least eight more Ally McBeal episodes.[57]
In April 2001, while he was on parole, a Los Angeles police officer found him wandering barefooted
in Culver City. He was arrested for suspicion of being under the influence of drugs, but was released
a few hours later,[58] even though tests showed he had cocaine in his system. [59] After this last arrest,
producer David E. Kelley and other Ally McBeal executives ordered last-minute rewrites and
reshoots and fired Downey from the show, despite the fact that Downey's character had
resuscitated Ally McBeal's ratings.[60] The Culver City arrest also cost him a role in the high-profile
film America's Sweethearts,[59] and the subsequent incarceration prompted Mel Gibson to shut down
his planned stage production of Hamlet as well. In July 2001, Downey pleaded no contest to the
Palm Springs charges, avoiding jail time. Instead, he was sent into drug rehabilitation and received
three years of probation, benefiting from California Proposition 36, which had been passed the year
before with the aim of helping nonviolent drug offenders overcome their addictions instead of
sending them to jail.[17][61]
The book Conversations with Woody Allen reports that director Woody Allen wanted to cast Downey
and Winona Ryder in his film Melinda and Melinda in 2005, but was unable to do so, because he
could not get insurance on them, stating, "We couldn't get bonded. The completion
bonding companies would not bond the picture unless we could insure them. We were heartbroken
because I had worked with Winona before [on Celebrity] and thought she was perfect for this and
wanted to work with her again. And I had always wanted to work with Bob Downey and always
thought he was a huge talent." [62]
In a December 18, 2000 article for People magazine entitled "Bad to Worse", Downey's stepmother
Rosemary told author Alex Tresnlowski, that Downey had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder "a
few years ago" and added that his bipolar disorder was "the reason he has a hard time staying
sober. What hasn't been tried is medication and intensive psychotherapy".[63] In the same article, Dr.
Manijeh Nikakhtar, a Los Angeles psychiatrist and co-author of Addiction or Self-Medication: The
Truth, claimed she received a letter from Downey in 1999, during his time at Corcoran II, asking for
advice on his condition. She discovered that "no one had done a complete [psychiatric] evaluation
[on him] ... I asked him flat out if he thought he was bipolar, and he said, 'Oh yeah. There are times I
spend a lot of money and I'm hyperactive, and there are other times I'm down.'" [63] In an article for the
March 2007 issue of Esquire, Downey stated that he wanted to address "this whole thing about the
bipolar" after receiving a phone call from "the Bipolar Association" asking him about being bipolar.
When Downey denied he had ever said he was bipolar, the caller quoted the People article, to which
Downey replied, "'No! Dr. Malibusian said [I said I was bipolar] ... ', and they go, 'Well, it's been
written, so we're going to quote it.'"[64] Downey flatly denied being "depressed or manic" and that
previous attempts to diagnose him with any kind of psychiatric or mood disorder have always been
skewed because "the guy I was seeing didn't know I was smokin' crack in his bathroom. You can't
make a diagnosis until somebody's sober."[64]

2001–2007: Career comeback

Downey at the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con International promoting Iron Man

After five years of substance abuse, arrests, rehab, and relapse, Downey was ready to work toward
a full recovery from drugs and return to his career. In discussing his failed attempts to control his
addictive behavior in the past, Downey told Oprah Winfrey in November 2004 that "when someone
says, 'I really wonder if maybe I should go to rehab?' Well, uh, you're a wreck, you just lost your job,
and your wife left you. Uh, you might want to give it a shot." [65] He added that after his last arrest in
April 2001, when he knew he would likely be facing another stint in prison or another form of
incarceration such as court-ordered rehab, "I said, 'You know what? I don't think I can continue doing
this.' And I reached out for help, and I ran with it. You can reach out for help in kind of a half-assed
way and you'll get it and you won't take advantage of it. It's not that difficult to overcome these
seemingly ghastly problems ... what's hard is to decide to do it." [65]
Downey got his first post-rehabilitation acting job in August 2001, lip-syncing in the video for Elton
John's single "I Want Love".[66] Video director Sam Taylor-Wood shot 16 takes of the video and used
the last one because, according to John, Downey looked completely relaxed and "The way he
underplays it is fantastic".[67]
Downey was able to return to the big screen after Mel Gibson, who had been a close friend to
Downey since both had co-starred in Air America, paid Downey's insurance bond for the 2003
film The Singing Detective (directed by his Back to School co-star Keith Gordon).[7] Gibson's gamble
paved the way for Downey's comeback and Downey returned to mainstream films in the mid-2000s
with Gothika, for which producer Joel Silver withheld 40% of his salary until after production wrapped
as insurance against his addictive behavior. Similar clauses have become standard in his contracts
since.[68] Silver, who was getting closer to Downey as he dated his assistant Susan Levin, also got
the actor the leading role in the comedy thriller Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, the directorial debut of
screenwriter Shane Black.[69]
After Gothika, Downey was cast in a number of leading and supporting roles, including well-received
work in a number of semi-independent films: A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Good Night, and
Good Luck, Richard Linklater's dystopian, rotoscoped A Scanner Darkly (in which Downey plays the
role of a drug addict), and Steven Shainberg's fictional biographical film of Diane Arbus, Fur, where
Downey's character represented the two biggest influences on Arbus's professional life, Lisette
Model and Marvin Israel.[70] Downey also received great notice for his roles in more mainstream fare
such as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Disney's poorly received The Shaggy Dog.[71]
On November 23, 2004, Downey released his debut musical album, The Futurist, on Sony Classical,
for which he designed the cover art and designed the track listing label on the CD with his son Indio.
[72]
 The album received mixed reviews,[73][74] but Downey stated in 2006 that he probably will not do
another album, as he felt that the energy he put into doing the album was not compensated. [75]
In 2006, Downey returned to television when he did voice acting on Family Guy in the episode "The
Fat Guy Strangler". Downey had previously telephoned the show's production staff and asked if he
could produce or assist in an episode creation, as his son Indio is a fan of the show. The producers
of the show accepted the offer and created the character of Patrick Pewterschmidt, Lois Griffin's long
lost, mentally disturbed brother, for Downey.[76]
Downey signed on with publishers HarperCollins to write a memoir, which in 2006, was already
being billed as a "candid look at the highs and lows of his life and career". In 2008, however,
Downey returned his advance to the publishers, and canceled the book without further comment. [77]
In 2007, Downey appeared in David Fincher's mystery thriller Zodiac, which was based on a true
story. He played the role of San Francisco Chronicle journalist Paul Avery, who was reporting
the Zodiac Killer case.