Although Robert Downey Jr. shines in his newest role as Detective Sherlock Holmes, his acting life has been a mystery of its own. Born in Greenwich Village, New York City, the son of underground filmmaker Robert Downey S. began his career playing a puppy in his father’s 1970 film “Pound.”
He dropped out of Santa Monica High School at age 17 and moved to New York, taking on such jobs as bussing tables at Central Falls restaurant, working in a shoe store, and performing as "living art" at SoHo's notorious underground club Area, while working to break into acting.
In 1987, he picked up the lead in “The Pick-up Artist,” opposite Molly Ringwald, and in the same year took on the role of Julian Wells in “Less Than Zero.”
Downey played the lead role in “Chaplin” in 1992, saying the part was “the culmination of an opportunity, and the biggest humiliation I've ever experienced. It was like winning the lottery, then going to prison. I'd watch one of Charlie's films, but by the end of it I was wildly depressed, because I realized that what he'd done in this twenty-minute short was more expressive and funnier than everything I've thought about doing my whole life.”
And Downey’s own off screen affair with drugs has given him as much notoriety as his skill on screen. In 1996, Downey was arrested for drunk driving, possession of heroine and possession of a handgun. The now 44-year-old Downey continued on a roller coaster ride of drug use and prison time. But Downey kept bouncing back - in 2000, he guest-starred on the popular television show “Ally McBeal,” and won the Golden Globe for “Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.” He also married producer Susan Downey, a woman he credits for keeping him both sober and sane. And he is a devoted father to his teen-age son, Indio, from a previous marriage.
A committed actor who takes his work seriously, he took on the title role in “Iron Man” in 2008, wearing lifts for the part to add to his height. He is going to reprise that role soon in the Iron Man sequel. In his most recent movie, Downey plays Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Detective Sherlock Holmes. Holmes and his stalwart partner Watson (Jude Law) engage in a battle of wits and brawn with a nemesis whose plot is a threat to all of England.
The film’s director Guy Ritchie says that he knew the movie was going to work when he saw on the on-screen chemistry between Downey and Law. The two, he said, quickly became a well-oiled machine and expertly pulled off the roles of Watson and Holmes.

DCM: What's your take on Sherlock Homes?

ROBERT DOWNEY JR: My take is what the puritans would expect, if the puritans know what they’re talking about, that is. Several of the most surprising things right off the bat are that of associated props have never appeared in the novels or the short stories..

DCM: What do you mean?

RD: He never wore a deerstalker cap except maybe once for a minute, but even then it was described differently. Even the long pipe was just something that William Gillette used to not obscure his face on stage. So, the very thing that, somebody smarter than me will know this, what do you call something when they cut something out of black paper? Silhouette. Even those things aren't really quite accurate so we just went back as much as we could without wanting to be reverent beyond repair to help Doyle explain the characters.

DCM: Was this an easy role?

RD: Well it's never easy to be relaxed, but we work really hard to make it seem that way and we would write out dialogue to make it seem more natural and have a flow to it. I think the other great thing about doing a period piece and doing something that's so specific to, and I really do think Doyle was an amazing writer and storyteller. I didn't really quite know how great he was until we kept reaching out to find quotes or descriptions he had said or really more philosophical points of view that Doyle used through Watson and Holmes and all that stuff.

DCM: Did that create more boundaries?

RD: The boundaries are that it's Victorian England and they're gentleman and so it's not some of that wavy-gravy free-flowing stuff. It’s more boundary laden, which I think was a great challenge.

DCM: Will you always be playing characters like this?

RD: Well, I think about rock stars and they always say they’re going to retire by this or that age, and then I think about other guys who shall remain nameless - one of which just starred with Rachel in a movie, who had double franchises going, and he wondered if he was too old to do it. I think the thing is, if the material is still good and if you still love working with the people you get to work with, then why not?

DCM: Please go on.

RD: I wouldn't want to launch anything else, but I think that Sherlock Holmes in particular has just been such a life changing experience, the act of researching it and making it, and Joel and I getting to do something big together and Lionel and Susan and Rachel and Jude. I’m so sorry that he's not here today. He is so the right arm of this movie. He wanted to go do something undeniably legitimate so he's doing Hamlet right now.

DCM: A far cry from Sherlock Holmes.

RD: But we of course say, Hamlet? Anyone can do that. Who gets cast that hasn’t! He was a huge part of this movie working, so really the answer to the question is, I'm down for the cause. By then we’ll probably have another kid, maybe a Shetland pony, a non-alcoholic vineyard. I might need to really keep cranking them out.

DCM: Do you feel like you figured out who Sherlock Holmes is?

RD: No, he’s like the character I played in Chaplin – the deeper you delve into him, the more elusive he is. When you portray a character like this who is so revered, you just sink everything into it. That’s what I did.

DCM: One Holmes fact that you care to share?

RD: He never had a curved pipe, you know. But it’s a good prop.

DCM: Talk about the preparation.

RD: It was all about the prep –the martial arts and dialect. I love the challenge.

DCM: How did the accent come about?

RD: I wanted to sound like an upper class sort, but Guy [Ritchie] said just speak English the way normal educated English guys come across. What’s interesting is that he’s a step ahead of himself. He knows what he said before he said it.

DCM: What about the relationship between you and Jude, who plays Watson?

RD: It’s called circumstantial homosexuality! To tell you the truth, this is me after lunch, honey. What do you want? Our fearless leader here would say - and by the way I've heard this is like a staple now - he’d go, we need a Butch and Sundance scene there. And we need the Heat scene here. We kept talking about Butch and Sundance. It's another thing entirely to actually get in the spirit of, what does that mean.

DCM: Ok, what does it mean, exactly?

RD: It means when people are so close that they almost can't stand each other, but they can't stand on their own two feet without each other. That's what we really felt. Doyle was giving us the first look at what was essentially a two-hander and Doyle essentially is Watson because he's telling the stories, but saying Watson's telling them. The process with Jude was, we met at Claridges. Joel was like, go, sell him! So he walks down the hall and my assistant, who never cares about anything, is standing in the hall. She's like, oh my God, there he is!

DCM: We understand her reaction!

RD: He walks down the hall and, you know, he's dressed in that fabulous, super expensive, underdressed way. By the way, Guy Ritchie typically on set would be like, you’re alright with that one, Hotson? And everyone would be like, who’s Hotson? And he’d go, he’s the hot Watson.

DCM: But you aren’t chopped liver, Robert. Did you work out for the first Iron Man?

RD: I had this Swiss guy, this guy named Brad Bose who has this Swedish technique. It was pathetic.

DCM: You looked buffed.

RD: More than that I just wanted to get strong because you can get puffy, and I'm not very tall so I would just kind of look distended. I don't know what the point in that would be, but I just wanted to get strong and so by the end I was doing pull-ups with like forty-five pound barbells around me. Whatever.

DCM: That’s great!

RD: The only reason I did that is because they say strength training is good for you as you get older because your joints can get brittle. My whole thing is that I'm not getting older. I am older. I've remarkably stayed in okay shape and I'm a big Kung Fu head.

DCM: Tell me more.

RD: I'm five years into an instructor grading, training in Kung Fu and I take that really seriously. More than anything though is that I go around the corner and my hubcaps come off. I know that I'm not a kid anymore and you have to work harder.

DCM: That’s true.

RD: I used to train for six weeks and look good for six years and now I train for six months and I look good for six minutes of the movie and the rest of the time they're like, 'Weren't you in shape two weeks ago?' I said, 'Shut up! It's three weeks before the next time I have my shirt off. Get away from me.' 'He's not fitting in the suit so good.' 'I had a damn pizza! Get off me!'"

DCM: So what happened after you met Jude?

RD: We literally, before he said he was going to do the movie, before he said he was available, before he said that he didn’t want to be quoted, we just started talking like two serious actors about what would need to happen to make this work as a piece of straight drama.

DCM: So you clicked right away.

RD: I think we became really close really quick because we just rolled up our sleeves and started working from jump. But we were pretty dirty in the movie.

DCM: How was it working with the film’s Director Guy Ritchie?

RD: At some point in shooting, he actually took on a guitar teacher because he felt that, you know, why shouldn't he be utilizing his time more efficiently while he’s waiting around for setups. Now, Rachel McAdams’ first day of shooting, she prepares for six and a half hours, comes to set, there's two long lens cameras, we did two takes, and I was like, great, now we're going to cover it. Because it's her first shot, and Guy's like, no that's all right, I think we got it. And I was like, we don't got it! And Rachel's like, should I have had my stand-in do it?

DCM: Was it a big scene?

RD: You look in the movie, it's the scene where I'm looking across the punch bowl and we see that she winks at me, and he had it. He had it, but sometimes you want to do more, particularly when you get all gussied up for half a day. You want to feel like you’re working there.

DCM: Now that there’s an Iron Man 2 coming out in the summer of 2010 – what would you say is Iron Man’s power source?

RD: "The RT? On a light day I would just go to the makeup chair and they would say, 'Good morning, Robert.' Then they'd put surgical adhesive on my chest and to save the battery, before and after every take of every scene in this movie which to me is just a feat of serenity this prop guy, Russell, would come up to me and go, 'Hey, how are you doing? I got it. Okay. Roll it, roll it, roll it!' I would be like, 'What's my line?!' 'It's not working. It's not working. Cut! I got it. Roll it!' Then at the end I'd walk away and he'd go, 'Sorry, dude. I have to save the battery.' It was crazy."

DCM: Why were you interested in Iron Man to begin with?

RD: I like a friendly competition where the winner takes all. I didn't feel like I needed to do anything. I just thought and had a feeling, had an intuition that I should chase this. I just had a good feeling about it.

DCM: Did you grow up on comic books or were you an Iron Man fan?

RD: I'm an American and that's a huge part of our collective unconscious and I'm very aware of it. I probably thought that Iron Man was a robot. I don't really know. I was like a street kid. It wasn't like someone was like, 'Here's your allowance. Be home for dinner.' I was watching 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' and trying to get laid. I had three goals and they were all hedonistic.