Institute for Robert Downey Jr Studies > Required Reading

Projections 10: Hollywood Film-makers on Film-making (Excerpt)

Mike Figgis: Why did you want to be an actor? Why did you choose to go into films?

Robert Downey Jr: I was 7 or 8, in the first grade, and we were doing this play in the classroom. I stood in the hallway, then I made my entrance into the classroom, and I think I said, “Yield the castle now, Lady Roxanne.” And people liked the fact that I had the confidence to say that. It just worked, I felt confident.

MF: Outside of that, were you not so confident?

RD: No

MF: Physically, what were you like?

RD: I was a little ... undersized. I don’t know if I was looking for approval so much as a looking for a connection. But it’s a strange place to feel connected with a bunch of relative strangers, doing something false.

MF: Pretending to be somebody you weren’t?

RD: Yes

MF: And then continuing to do that as an adult?

RD: Mm-hmm.

MF: I find that very perverse. You do it, I do it—I encourage people to do it as realistically as possible. But sometimes I stop and think about it, and it’s strange. But anyway, from the age of seven, you were active as an actor?

RD: Sure. Also, my dad was a filmmaker, so it was cheaper to have me play parts. I think with other kids you’d have to stop after so many hours.

MF: Was he pleased that you had become an actor?

RD: I think he was indifferent. My dad says anybody can act, a few can direct, and nobody can write. On a scale of 1 to 10, being an actor was about the least honorable of those three.

MF: I don’t agree. I think that anyone can direct; there’s always enough support around. But I guess what he meant was ‘direct well.’

RD: Right. I think ‘well’ would come after each of those.

MF: Does it trouble you that that’s what your job title is?

RD: Yes, somewhat. I don’t know why. Putting it on a lease application, “Occupation – actor.” The funny thing is, when, after that, it says “Employed,” you write “self.” I never employed myself as an actor in my life.

MF: Why doesn’t it feel like a real job?

RD: Well, I do think there’s something honorable about it, because it’s very humiliating. And you have to be confident that you’ll have enough humility to do it well.

MF: Technically you’re a good actor.

RD: I’m one of the best, yes.

MF: With some actors, I know they’re dying for me to rehearse them. But with you and certain others, I run a mile from rehearsal or any kind of repetition, or even talking about it. I get a sense that it would diminish the result, and the only way is to slide into it and then get out again as quickly as possible. I mean, you hope to be able to create some poetry together, but it can only come about by controlled accident—controlled in the sense that we know why we’re there. If you were truthful, would you rather not be an actor?

RD: If you woke me up in the middle of the night and said, “Do you want to do this anymore?” I’d say no. And yet I think it’s really snotty when actors who have done well, and haven’t been chewed up by it all say, “Oh, I really don’t have any passion for this any more.” As though it’s déclassé to say that you love what you do. But it’s maybe only working with you, and on a couple of other things in the past ten years, that I felt there was any real merit to what I was doing, whether it was received well or not.

MF: Is Hollywood just completely perverse?

RD: There’s a dark benevolence to it. My mom said the last time she saw me with any real humility was when I was seventeen, doing theatre in New York. I was really a busboy then, not an actor. When I came to L.A., everything that I thought I wanted happened for me. And I think that what kept me from really looking at myself, and growing, was my success.

MF: But so many people go into movies, or the music business, where success is synonymous with money and drugs and so forth. And they often describe it as like being on a roller coaster, swept along on a wave. With you, I don’t buy that. Because you have an overview of yourself—I’m sure you had it when you were seven. I can candidly say I worked with you at a point when you were, as far as anybody else was concerned, completely out of your nut. But I always had the impression that you were also sitting outside yourself, completely aware of what you were doing. And if there was a wave, you were watching it.

RD: I think the further out you go, the better the objectivity you have.

MF: If you’d been more challenged artistically, or if you’d just had to work for your rewards, would you have felt better about the whole situation?

RD: No, I did have to work for it, you know. Even when I was doing what I call “faxing in a performance,” it’s still work. But there are two separate things—the juggernaut that is external success, and the interior thing of whether you’re growing in coordination with that.

MF: Then why didn’t you?

RD: Just laziness. Success and fame are the best ways to keep people away from you, you can put them between you and other people. And I noticed that other people were kind of happy for me, but they didn’t really like it because it was like they were losing, in this unconscious not-really-talked-about race. Even people I went to high school with—success put a great buffer between me and them—and me and myself, in terms of having to deal with it.

MF: How did you relate to other people? Did you behave badly?

RD: I was kind of described as a lovable tornado.

MF: That sounds positive.

RD: Yeah, but a tornado nonetheless. I think the openness that might be necessary to be a good actor can be lethal in your real life.

MF: That’s true—it’s true of musicians too.

RD: I had the whole thing of people saying, ‘I’m sorry you’re so self-destructive because you’ve got such great talent.’ As if what someone has to offer is somehow more worthwhile than their pulse, or their personal comfort. And I bought it big time. I was just thinking today—I got in all this trouble, in jail ... I stopped growing as Robert when I started becoming successful as an actor and focusing primarily on this or that movie, and diverting my energy from what was going on and what real life lessons were there for me.

MF: But when you were 18, that wasn’t a consideration in your mind?

RD: No.

MF: Were you having a good time at least?

RD: Oh, yes, it couldn’t have been better. I came from New York, I wasn’t one of those fellows who grew up in Malibu and their family were in the industry. I’d never had a car, I’d never had the clothes. It’s so stupid, but cars, clothes, parties—they were what it was about.

MF: Fair enough. What else are you supposed to do when you’re 18? But I had in my mind that you’d always been in Malibu. When I first saw you there, you had the look of someone who was painted on the scenery.

RD: Well, that was right before the inevitable decline of recent years. I was bottoming out, but I was living like a king. You told me, “This is no good for you, you’ve got to get out of here.” And I was like, “What the fuck is he talking about? Look at this, look at these tiles, look at this ocean. What’s wrong with this?” It all seemed like a finished piece to me.

MF: I thought it was a beautiful place. I was just concerned by the people that were visiting you.

RD: If I moved away, they’d keep coming to this address looking for me, and I wouldn’t see them anymore.

MF: So—doing all that at 18, fine. At the same time, you were educated, right?

RD: No. Well, I think I’m hyper-educated. But not school-wise, no. High school dropout.

MF: Do you like reading?

RD: Yes.

MF: Do you like watching films?

RD: Sure. Well, not The Avengers, but every other one.

MF: Okay, fair enough. But you still like movies. A lot of people that I speak to don’t anymore—particularly people who work in the industry. I can understand that. They get disillusioned, when they pay their money and they don’t get what they want. A lot of people are returning to books for stimulation—literature, the word. Did you always read?

RD: Oh, yes, since I was really young.

MF: Were you encouraged to?

RD: No. I think that I was always really drawn to the real Bodhi Tree stuff. I think it saved my ass because, in the midst of everything else, regardless of how I behaved, I still felt like I knew what the truth was.

MF: When did you start being a musician?

RD: When I was twelve, in 1977. Where we were living in Woodstock, there was a piano in the living room. Mom and Dad were breaking up, it was there, I went over, I learned a simple scale, and then I realized I could play and I escaped in that. I associate music with a healthy escapism.

MF: I’ve heard your music and it’s really good, I was kind of intrigued by it. You write sophisticated, complex tunes which have what I would way is an advanced harmonic sense in them. You don’t just do blues things. So how important is music to you?

RD: I was reading Plato, I think, when he was talking about this perfect society. Basically, he said, “Master the body, and add music.” And I think that’s true. I think that music can help master the body too. I don’t know that music has been recognized for what it really is.

MF: Do you want to talk about your jail period?

RD: Sure.

MF: The first time we met, in a restaurant called Kate Mantalini, you turned up, I think, two hours late—with a gun.

RD: Barefoot.

MF: Barefoot and completely speeding. We had what was, for me, and incomprehensible one-hour meeting, and I found myself looking at you and thinking, “You’re fascinating, but there are 500 reasons why you’re not going to be in this film.” Then, at some point, we started talking about music. I remember driving away and thinking that I’d like you to be in the film, which is what happened. But I could see you were going through a real crisis, and it got worse, and you were arrested a couple of times while we were making the film. Then you were very well-behaved. You never gave me a problem in terms of scheduling, which I thank you for. Then, as we wrapped, you finally got locked up. What was going on?

RD: Well, first up, when I came to meet you at the restaurant, I thought we were going to talk about me playing the lead—which I was perfectly happy with, I was romantic and ready for that assignment. Then, when you said, “No, I think you should play Charlie,” I was dying inside. I went to the bathroom to get high and I looked at myself and said, “You know, I may never look more ready to play someone really sick than I do right now.” In years before that, there had always been a sense of, “Robert’s in trouble but he doesn’t look so bad, so let’s not talk about it.” Either that or, “Let’s get into a big discussion about how Robert’s got to get it together.” But it really blew my mind that you were one of the first people who seemed to just acknowledge what was going on with me, and honor the fact that I was willing myself into a very bad place, maybe for some higher reason than just death. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure if you weren’t saying that, you know—

MF:—that it was okay.

RD: Or rather that I could, for me anyway. I didn’t see any direct request to alter my course of action.

MF: That did cross my mind. At one point I came out to see you in Malibu and give you a bit of a talking to. But I also felt that you were on your way somewhere, and I didn’t think anybody was going to talk you out of it. You seemed so intelligent. Also, I felt it would be good for you to work, hopefully on something with some spirit. There was a lot of passion in that role for me, it was about a friend of mine. But there was a point in the restaurant where I decided to be direct with you and I said, “Why have you got a gun?” And you went, “What gun?” I said, “The one on the floor between your feet.” And you said, “Oh, I didn’t want to leave it in my car.” I said, “I’m not interested in why it’s not in the car, why have you got one anyway?” That showed a sneaky, druggie side of you—your answer was so cleverly evasive. You were addicted?

RD: Yes, I was smoking heroin and coke. The thing is, I don’t think that films happen by accident, I think that people do the films they’re meant to do. The film I’d done before One Night Stand was Restoration, which was just a calamity, so I started really plummeting. I saw your film as an opportunity to really explore my dissatisfaction with life, and with being an actor. So I was sort of filmed doing it, you know. But after that, I did a couple of things I really didn’t like—I did possibly the worst action movie of all time, and that’s just not good for the maintenance of a good spiritual condition. You’ve had a traumatic year, you’ve been practically suicidal—what do you think would be really healing for you? How about like twelve weeks of running around as Johnny Handgun? I think that if you talk to a spirit guide, they would say, “That’ll kill you.”

MF: Why did you do it?

RD: For the same reason that I did Air America 10 years before—I thought maybe there was something I was missing, and what I really needed to do was to be in one of those films that I love taking my kid to. It would end up being really depressing. I’d rather wake up in jail for a TB test than have to wake up another morning knowing I’m going to the set of U.S. Marshals.

MF: Really?

RD: Yes. Somehow I finished it, but I felt I was destined to get in trouble for what had happened while I was doing that movie. Then I went to do In Dreams with Neil Jordan. The role was dark, he was a serial killer, but I just looked at him as someone who had a really bad childhood. He was very childish, and I could really relate to that. On that, I probably had six of the best weeks I’d had in a couple of years.

MF: In terms of getting up, going to work, being cheerful?

RD: Yes, I felt motivated. But obviously it’s not enough. You’ve said to me about certain actors being paid so much money—sooner or later there’ll be a creative downfall by it.

MF: It can’t survive. We know we’re not really worth that much money.

RD: I remember when Bruce Willis was a bartender at Cafe Central, and I used to go there—I was a busboy downtown. Now I feel closer to those times than ever—because I’m almost exactly where I was when I was seventeen. I live on my assistant’s couch.

MF: How do you feel now?

RD: I feel incredibly grateful to have the freedom to reinvent myself—as opposed to allowing myself to be invented. I mean, it’s not like I don’t acquiesce to that happening.

MF: Are you bored still? You were bored the last time we spoke.

RD: Yes, but that’s no one’s fault but my own.

MF: Have you always been bored?

RD: I think I’ve been resigned for a long time. I think a lot of it too is to do with being a student of this industry, and of people who have done it their way. I’ve amassed a little knowledge over the years and I think that humility has not done me a service, in so much as I would go and act any way I wanted, as long as I came back to the crocodile tear, “Gee, I’m sorry, I better just follow direction now” routine.

MF: I’ve never seen you angry. Have you ever lost your temper?

RD: Oh, God, yeah. Last time I lost my temper was when I got in a fight in jail.

MF: Did you win?

RD: Initially—and then I got my clock cleaned. But that’s because initially I was scuffling with people my own size. And then a very large shadow was cast over me and the next thing I remember is waking up in a pool of my own blood.

MF: You told me something about jail which I found sad—that it didn’t seem any different from L.A. People were still hustling scripts.

RD: Yes. There was a lieutenant who said he had this script about unicorns, but it wasn’t just your usual unicorn script.

MF: I’ve never read a unicorn script.

RD: After I got in the fight I was down in this discipline module, which is like a hole. Three times a day, you see a pair of hands and some food come in—it’s pretty awful. One day it opens and there was this lieutenant, with some deputy he’d brought by to meet me. I hadn’t had a shower in 5 days, I was sleeping in my clothes, my hair was all fucked up. But that Hollywood big-shot entertainer thing came in, and I thought, “Well, I’d better come to, I have company.” And this guy came in and said, “Listen, I know you don’t have a lot to read in here. I hope I wouldn’t be crossing the line if I brought a script by for you. It’s about unicorns. It’s not what you think, there’s a very human element to it.” And I was just dumbfounded. I said, “Wow, great.” There were other times, inmates said, “We should do a movie about this.” I’ve heard this from other people too—actors, directors, writers, and in some mundane situation like driving school. “Man, we should do a film about this, where we’re all in diving school together. It’d be fucking great.” Just the last thing you need.

MF: How long were you there?

RD: Four months.

MF: And it was okay?

RD: Mm-hmm. I mean, you can have a great day in jail, and you can have a lousy day in Beverly Hills.

MF: So what’s happening now? You switched agents just before all this happened. When you came out, did you expect to get a job?

RD: I’ve always expected to get a job. Now it’s just more difficult than ever before—even before I got in trouble, and I was complaining about “Why aren’t I king of this town?” Plus now, rightfully so, the insurance companies want to take the production companies for a ride—it’s justifiable extortion. But nothing’s really changed. I think maybe I created all this stuff, so I could have a period of time to figure out what it is that I really wanted to do to begin with.

MF: How far down that process are you?

RD: Just catching up. I’m setting aside this weekend to really think about it.

MF: What do you want to happen for you?

RD: Well, I think that anything short of a 180-degree, maybe 360-degree change is going to yield the same results—misery, resentment, incarceration, disappointment...

MF: Is that happening already?

RD: Yes, because it’s like trying to fix a broken hammer with a broken hammer. I realize that, really, since I was 17 or 18, I haven’t exactly been in the most realistic mind-set. And if I expect a happy and healthy life and want to continue to be an artist in any way, then I have to recognize that there’s nothing to be lost by doing it with a clear head.

MF: Do you really think so?

RD: Yes.

MF: I may be wrong, but I don’t think of you as damaged or having a problem. I think you know what you’re doing. My heroes all seem to have been junkies. That’s not because they’re junkies, it’s just that they’re often very brave people who burned fast—because accelerated creativity yields a higher gain. When I was your age I was paranoid about drugs, because I thought creativity had to be a pure experience. It’s only now that I’ve taken on board the idea that sometimes, as far as creativity is concerned, it’s okay not to have an absolutely clear head. You’ve always seemed to me to have that kind of mind. But I always thought you were lazy too.

RD: You’re absolutely right. And I’m a perfect example of a microcosm of what’s going on in this zip code right now. Because I think laziness is a resignation to inability, and inability is evil.

MF: It’s a lazy town. Nobody likes to work hard. And I come from a very old-fashioned work ethic, where you feel guilty if you’re not worn out by the end of the day. But your problem is—you can do it. It’s no sweat, and it never will be. So I do think you need to go somewhere else—not too far away. But I do think maybe you need to take responsibility.

RD: I believe that will transpire, though I think practically everyone around me will see it as just the latest in a long line of insane ideas.

MF: Yeah, but who gives a fuck?

RD: Yeah—why stop now?

MF: In this town, films are made by mundane committees. There’s almost a conspiracy to hold back creativity—because creativity throws a horrible spotlight on the dullness and the mundanity of those committees. So often creativity gets bastardized—as addictive personality or whatever. Sometimes they get it wrong, it’s like misdiagnosing schizophrenia as manic depression. They’re close, they look the same—but they’re not.

RD: You know the R.D. Laing story about the lady who came in and said she was really worried her son had become schizophrenic? So the kid came in and in fact he was properly schizophrenic. And later on, she says, “Well, the truth is, his father isn’t his father. But he doesn’t know it.” I can relate to that a lot. Like there’s something afoot and, rightly or not, people say, “Oh, but he doesn’t know that.” I didn’t come here just to do a couple of junkets a year and keep all the fucking plates spinning. I’m so fearful of letting go of all the things that have contributed to my demise because I’m so comfortable.

MF: Is it the fact that—on a good year, if you don’t blot your copybook—you can earn millions of dollars? Hard to say no to, don’t you think?

RD: Sure. I also think that if you can get it, then you deserve it.

MF: Obviously, if you don’t behave, you won’t earn a lot of money, that’s a fact. Has your income dropped a lot lately?

RD: Yes.

MF: What’s the most you ever earned on a movie?

RD: It was in 1994. Two and a quarter million—for 6 weeks on a movie called Only You.

MF: And before and after that, you were in that area?

RD: Mm-hmm.

MF: So you’ve spent a lot of money.

RD: All of it. I’ve always spent the money I’ve made—because I was complacent enough, with no reason to do otherwise.

MF: So you don’t really have a lot of assets right now?

RD: None.

MF: What kind of money are you earning now?

RD: Maybe a quarter of what it was—half a million for the latest thing.

MF: And does it pretty much get swallowed up?

RD: Yes. It’s just enough to keep all the plates spinning. And that’s fucking miserable. Right now I have this idea of doing some paintings and putting a piece of music to each painting for an exhibit. But how can I survive, following that dream?

MF: Do you feel you’re having to go to work right now to pay the housekeeping?

RD: I feel like I have to, but I’m not going to. Because I have to get through that fear of economic insecurity, if I want to live as an artist. I don’t think I have been an artist for a long time. I’ve been on automatic, trying to make the best of it, and it’s yielded me a lot of trouble and very little satisfaction. I’ve done things to anesthetize myself from the reality—which is that people do write, or direct, or take time to make books or be photographers. And there’s a balance that comes with people who take care of their souls, instead of just try to keep a lie running.

MF: For that reason I’ve always pictured you in Europe—if you wanted to create a base that was a bit quieter, where you could build up those things. And you could—you paint, you do music, you could direct easily, I think. So how much of a challenge is it for you to get off the treadmill? Presumably, your price will creep up again, right? This town is very forgiving, financially. The fact that you’re working at all is remarkable.

RD: Well, what nauseates me more than anything is the whole ‘Hollywood loves a comeback’ thing. Just because I can be embraced again, be the recovered guy and ride that for all it’s worth, like everything’s different now—why should I play into that? That’s just the other side of the same fucking deck.

MF: You shouldn’t—I think that’s a death. If I saw you on a chat show being self-congratulatory about your evangelism, I’d throw up. I’d worry about you too. I’d think you were being manipulated. Okay, some quick questions to finish—give me five books that you dig.

RD: Emotional Care for the Financially Burned and Disfigured, Seth Speaks, Gore Vidal’s Julian. The Penguin book on Etruscan Art. I’ve got to say The Talisman.

MF: Five pieces of music—any genre.

RD: Erik Satie—how do you say that in French, Gymnopedies. Phil Collins, No Jacket Required. Elvis Costello, Imperial Bedroom. Barry Manilow’s Greatest Hits. The Unforgettable Fire, U2.

MF: Five movies.

RD: Paths of Glory. King of Hearts. Green Card, Big Night, The Battle of Algiers.

MF: Five actresses.

RD: That’s impossible. Hey, who was that French actress, did this movie where she works in a hair salon, she’s nuts and kills all these people at the end? Not Claudette Colbert. Whoever she is—her. Diane Lane.

MF: Why Diane? I agree, but ...

RD: I don’t know. She’s just so—she’s not full of shit. We worked together on Chaplin. Which brings me to Moira Kelly. Kim Novak. Paulette Goddard.

MF: Okay. Actors.

RD: John Malkovich. Chris Walken. The guy who plays the serial killer in Con Air—Steve Buscemi. Alan Arkin. Whoever played the sniper in Saving Private Ryan [Barry Pepper]. That guy’s fucking clean—best thing about the movie.

MF: Five directors.

RD: Stanley Kubrick. For new folks, Keith Gordon. He directed The Chocolate War. He was an actor. I would say that’s all I got.