Pubdate: Mon, 05 Feb 2001
Source: Newsweek (US)
Website: http://www.msnbc.com/news/NW-front_Front.asp
Address: 251 West 57th Street, New York, N.Y. 10019
Contact:  2001 Newsweek, Inc
Author: David France and John Horn With Ana Figueroa in Los Angeles and 
Julie Scelfo in New York

ROBERT DOWNEY JR: ONE DAY AT A TIME

A Gifted Actor Who Can't Do Wrong On-Screen, Downey Can't Seem To Help 
Himself In Private

Addiction Predilection: Robert Downey Jr

Feb. 12 issue -  Early in "The Last Party," Robert Downey Jr's 1993 
documentary about the Clinton-Bush presidential contest, the actor gives a 
startling description of his own internal psychic face-off.

"I call it the Good Boy and the Goat Boy," he says in a voice-over. "You 
know, those parts of me that are only out for my own instant gratification. 
Delayed gratification is not something that I was raised with." The 
Oscar-nominated "Chaplin" actor then stoops over and begins to hop around. 
He keeps up the Pan routine throughout the movie, at parks and political 
conventions in New York, L.A. and Houston. The movie is a decisive victory 
for the goat.

Last week the goat was on display again as Downey picked his way past a 
crush of spectators and journalists inside Department 1-A of Riverside 
Superior Court in Indio, Calif. The occasion was a brief procedural 
appearance in his newest felony drug-possession case, the fallout of an 
alleged three-day coke-and-Valium jag inside bungalow No. 311 at the tony 
Merv Griffin Resort Hotel in Palm Springs in November. (The case was 
postponed until Feb. 21.)

SHOWS OF SUPPORT

The tally of celebrities who have fought addiction in the glare of public 
disapproval is as long as the Barrymore family tree. But Downey's 
disintegration has touched a compassionate nerve in America. That's 
probably due to both the relative orderliness of his nonviolent crimes and 
their fortuitous timing: while the notion of imprisoning addicts has 
slipped in esteem, the actor's career has soared. In the weeks after his 
November arrest, visits to Downey's online fan site skyrocketed by some 300 
percent. Leslie Marciniak, 20, runs The Unofficial Robert Downey Jr
Web Page, where much of the public concern has been vented. "I get tons and 
tons of e-mail, people asking me, 'Where can I write him to show him my 
support?'," she says. She adds, "I'm concerned about the atmosphere he's in 
in Hollywood. I don't really think that's good for him."

But Hollywood, it seems, won't let Downey go. At last month's Golden Globes 
gala, where he won the best-supporting-actor award for his recurring role 
on "Ally McBeal," and the subsequent L.A. Film Critics' dinner in Beverly 
Hills, Calif., his fellow actors hoisted him on the shoulders of their 
sustained applause (while Julia Roberts signaled her encouragement by 
pinching his butt). "It's meant the world to me that people have been so 
supportive and come up to me on the street and [say] that they're rooting 
for me," he told reporters.

In his excruciatingly public battle, including numerous rehabs and three 
stints in jail, Downey, 35, has come to symbolize the addictive personality 
itself: charming, wily and self-destructive. "Because you know he's got all 
the money in the world and all the resources, you sort of get to see his 
addiction in a purified form," says Dr. Joshua Gamson, a Yale sociology 
professor and author of "Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary 
America." And people want him to succeed-they want Good Boy to whump Goat 
Boy-not just for Downey's good but as a victory for the human spirit.

That has drug-treatment experts fascinated and scared. Some worry that 
public opinion has given Downey too easy a ride, which may not be the best 
thing for him. "We cut corners for VIPs," says Dr. Joseph Pursch, a veteran 
addiction specialist who treated Betty Ford and astronaut Buzz Aldrin. "The 
minute you give the VIP a weekend pass, you invite a relapse."

A TINSELTOWN RITE OF PASSAGE

Indeed, in "The Last Party" Downey openly celebrated the revolving door of 
rehabilitation as if it were a Tinseltown rite of passage. At the time 
Downey was getting his start, John Belushi's overdose death and Courtney 
Love's heroin use had come to symbolize celebrity cool. These days recovery 
is worn in Hollywood like a badge of honor. Melanie Griffith talks about 
her struggles getting off painkillers on the cover of this month's Redbook 
magazine. NBC's "West Wing" features an AA-going chief of staff (played by 
John Spencer, himself a recovering alcoholic) and includes explicit 
plotlines on the treatment-versus-prison debate. Perhaps not surprisingly, 
the show's creator, Aaron Sorkin, is a recovering cocaine addict. "Drug use 
is not a criminal problem. It's a medical problem," he says.

Downey first entered rehab in his mid-20s (it's where he met his future 
wife) and soon became a regular. Yet his career flourished. "He's given 
some terrific performances high. It certainly hasn't hurt his acting," says 
James Toback, who directed Downey in "Black and White," "The Pick-Up 
Artist" and "Two Girls and a Guy."

Then came his arrest in 1996 for possessing cocaine, heroin and an unloaded 
.357 magnum. The judge in that case gave him every opportunity to avoid 
prison, not uncommon in nonviolent drug cases. But he fled from rehab, 
missed court-ordered drug tests and continued using coke despite every warning.

Privately, his life was as chaotic as any addict's. His wife filed for 
separation (and, more recently, divorce). According to documents filed in 
L.A. courts that NEWSWEEK reviewed, the IRS lodged tax liens totaling more 
than $1 million against him throughout the '90s. Several banks won sizable 
judgments. And producers Terence Michael and Richard Finney are suing 
Downey and his father, filmmaker Robert Downey Sr, claiming they 
commissioned the pair to write a script in 1996 for $250,000. What they got 
instead sounds truly bizarre: a series of unrelated vignettes involving 
waiters yelling at customers and other "themes of anger and paranoia," 
according to Michael. They are strung together under the movie title "The 
Very Special." Downey Jr is scheduled to be deposed in the 
breach-of-contract suit this week. (Footnote: it was Downey Sr who first 
introduced his son to marijuana, when he was 6. "We thought it was cute to 
let them smoke it and all," he has said. "It was an idiot move on our parts.")

'IT SIMPLY HAS NOT WORKED'

By 1999, Superior Court Judge Lawrence Mira believed he had little choice 
but to jail Downey. "We tried rehabilitation. It simply has not worked," he 
said at the time. Downey became the rarest of Hollywood felons: locked up 
while still young and at the height of his career. To all outward 
appearances, he'd reached rock bottom.

He still hadn't. Released in August, his comeback seemed effortless. He 
posed shirtless for Details magazine and charmed reporters with his belief 
that prison saved his life. But charm is the strategy of a successful 
addict. His treatment counselors soon granted him more liberty. He was out 
for just three months before police, responding to an anonymous 911 call 
the Sunday after Thanksgiving, discovered four small bags of cocaine and 16 
Valium pills in his $625-a-night hotel room. He later tested positive for 
both drugs.

What went wrong? People close to him blame his relapse on depression 
brought on by his festering finances and splintering marriage. "I know it's 
textbook to say he might have wanted to go back to prison, that he might 
have felt he needed that kind of help again. But I don't buy it," says 
Michael Hoffman, a friend who directed Downey in "Restoration." "I think it 
was just one of those horrible holiday nights when you feel bad and you 
know an easy way to feel better." Hoffman believes it would be "a 
monumental act of stupidity" to remand him to prison in response.

Experts know that relapses are common on the road to recovery, and not 
always signs of complete failure. Still, some believe that Downey has not 
tried hard enough. "He needs a substantial period of treatment-six months, 
a year, maybe longer," says Joseph Califano Jr, chairman of the National 
Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. "But will 
he do that or will he go back to the 'Ally McBeal' show?" Califano and many 
other specialists lay part of the blame on the system, first for allowing 
Downey to slip so frequently before cracking down, then for cracking down 
by removing him from his treatment regimen and slamming him into prison-and 
finally, for paroling him to lax follow-up. "You wouldn't try to train a 
puppy that way," says Mark A.R. Kleiman, a drug-policy expert at UCLA.

UNDERLYING PSYCHIATRIC DISORDER

The actor is out on $15,000 bail and awaiting a plea proposal from 
prosecutors. As a repeat offender, he faces a maximum sentence of four 
years. Meanwhile, Downey is seeing a psychiatrist who has diagnosed 
clinical depression; he is taking medication for it. It is the first time 
he has been treated with prescription drugs for any underlying psychiatric 
disorder. In addition, he gives weekly urine samples to his parole officer, 
attends daily recovery meetings and has recently begun leading other 
addicts in peer-counseling sessions.

The good news for Downey, at least financially, is that his "Ally McBeal" 
character has been renewed for another season. This is also good news for 
the show, which had been slipping before he arrived as Calista Flockhart's 
love interest. But whether the show's success is good news for Downey's 
recovery is still not clear. His career remains up in the air because film 
producers are increasingly doubtful he'd be able to finish any movie he 
starts without threats of a new arrest or prison sentence. He seems to know 
this keenly. According to the arrest report, one of the officers said to 
him, "Just because you are a movie star, that doesn't mean you can break 
the rules." Downey replied, "I'm not a movie star. I'm a guy with a drug 
problem." Chalk up at least one loss for Goat Boy?
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