Robert John Downey Jr. (born April 4, 1965) is an American actor. His career has included critical and popular success in his youth, followed by a period of substance abuse and legal troubles, and a resurgence of commercial success in middle age. For three consecutive years from 2012 to 2015, Downey topped the Forbes list of Hollywood's highest-paid actors, making an estimated $80 million in earnings between June 2014 and June 2015.
Downey was born in Manhattan, New York, the younger of two children. His father, Robert Downey Sr., is an actor and filmmaker, while his mother, Elsie Ann (née Ford), was an actress who appeared in Downey Sr.'s films. Downey's father is of half Lithuanian Jewish, one-quarter Hungarian Jewish, and one-quarter Irish descent, while Downey's mother had Scottish, German, and Swiss ancestry. Downey and his older sister Allyson grew up in Greenwich Village.
As a child, Downey was "surrounded by drugs". His father, a drug addict, allowed Downey to use marijuana at age six, an incident which his father has said he now regrets. Downey later stated that drug use became an emotional bond between him and his father: "When my dad and I would do drugs together, it was like him trying to express his love for me in the only way he knew how." Eventually, Downey began spending every night abusing alcohol and "making a thousand phone calls in pursuit of drugs".
During his childhood Downey had minor roles in his father's films. He made his acting debut at the age of five, playing a sick puppy in the absurdist comedy Pound (1970), and then at seven appeared in the surrealist Greaser's Palace (1972). At the age of ten, he was living in England and studied classical ballet as part of a larger curriculum. He attended the Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Training Center in upstate New York as a teenager. When his parents divorced in 1978, Downey moved to California with his father, but in 1982 he dropped out of Santa Monica High School and moved back to New York to pursue an acting career full-time.
Downey and Kiefer Sutherland, who shared the screen in the 1988 drama 1969, were roommates for three years when he first moved to Hollywood to pursue his career in acting.!
Addiction and sobriety--->>>
Downey maintains that he has been drug-free since July 2003,and has credited his wife with helping him overcome his drug and alcohol habits, along with his family, therapy, meditation, twelve-step recovery programs, yoga and the practice of Wing Chun kung fu in the martial art, he learned from Eric Oram, who is also a fight consultant in several of Downey's movies. Oram was Downey's personal Fight Coordinator in Avengers: Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War. In December 2015, Downey received a full and unconditional pardon from Governor of California Jerry Brown for his prior drug convictions. Oram wrote a letter in support of Downey’s pardon to California governor Jerry Brown.