From there things only improved as he landed the role of the blue-haired wisecracker in Rodney Dangerfield's Back to School. Then Downey's role in Less Than Zero helped make him a temporary pinup, winning young Tiger Beat hearts like an '80s version of Justin Bieber (if Justin Bieber were an actor and had male genitalia).
And then came his Academy Award-nominated performance as Charlie Chaplin in Chaplin. His performance spans Chaplin's life from a youth to an old man, and he gets everything right: the accent, the humor, the pathos and the physical comedy.
And Then ...
Drugs. Lots of drugs. Downey was arrested a string of times from 1996 to 2001 and soon became a semi-blacklisted liability. He took work where he could find it, whether that be Ally McBeal, where he was fired due to more drug arrests, or Elton John videos.
But Then ...
With sobriety came success. First there was the criminally underrated Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and then ... Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes. Who knew that Tony Stark and the world's greatest detective were both so much like Robert Downey Jr.?
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