Jodie Foster recalls working with Robert Downey Jr. when he was in the depth of his addictions

Jodie Foster and Robert Downey Jr. were regularly bumping into each other on the red carpet during the recent awards season. Downey, 59, won plaudits, including a Best Supporting Oscar, for his role in Oppenheimer. Foster, 61, was nominated for her role in Nyad.

The two actors have known each other for decades. Foster cast Downey in her second movie as director, 1995’s Home For the Holidays.

At the time, Downey was in the depths of his much-documented addiction battles. Despite scoring an Oscar nomination for his lead role in Chaplin in 1992, by the mid-90s Downey was considered unhireable by much of Hollywood because of his personal problems.

Downey is the subject of a major profile in the latest issue of Esquire. The magazine talked to Foster and asked her why she decided to take a risk on him at the time.

“I took him aside at one point during filming and said, ‘Look, I couldn’t be more grateful for what you’ve given in this film,’” Foster recalled. “‘But I’m scared of what happens to you next. Right now you are incredibly good at balancing on the barstool. But it’s really precarious, and I’m not sure how that’s going to end.’”

“I have faith in people’s ability to change”

Pressed on why she believed in working with Downey, she said, “What was so interesting about him then was what a genius he was—there was more creativity in his little finger than I will ever have in my whole life—but he did not have the discipline.

“He was so out there that all of that wonderful talent was kind of just, like, flailing his arms in the water and making a big mess. But it was in there somewhere, right? Because now he is somebody who’s become disciplined almost as a way of surviving.”

“I have faith in people’s ability to change if they want it, and he really wanted it. And Mel, too.”

She’s talking about Mel Gibson. Foster also gave Gibson a chance by casting him in her 2011 movie, The Beaver. It came five years after he was arrested by police whilst drunk. He blasted cops with anti-semitic language and was considered similarly unhireable in Hollywood.

Another actor to praise Downey as a “genius” was Ben Stiller, who directed the movie Tropic Thunder.

“I really do feel like that’s the word for him. Although a genius is someone who might not have to work as hard, and Robert works incredibly hard.”

Downey’s ups and downs

Downey began to pick up small roles in movies in the 1980s, including Weird Science and Less Than Zero. Chaplin turned him into a star, but the accompanying fame accelerated his substance abuse.

In an interview with Huffington Post in 2020, Foster said Downey’s family staged an intervention at the end of the shoot to get Downey into rehab. It was to be the first of at least a half dozen rehab stays.

By the end of the 1990s, Downey ended up being sentenced to three years in jail. Whilst high, he’d wandered into an empty house in Malibu and fallen asleep in a child’s bed. At the time, he was on parole for an earlier offense of being in possession of cocaine and heroin.

He served a year in prison. Downey finally got clean around 2003, after meeting his wife, Susan on the set of the movie Gothika. He has credited her with helping him to stick to a recovery program. He was slowly able to inch his way back to the top of the Hollywood tree, landing the role of Tony Stark in 2008’s hugely successful Iron Man.