Inmate P50522 did kitchen duty, bunked with “Figueroa Slim,” Timmons, “Sugar Bear,” and “Big Al” – and got his GED.
On Sunday, he is the favorite to be named best supporting actor at the Oscars.
If Robert Downey Jr.’s role as the conniving Lewis Strauss in “Oppenheimer” wins him a little bald gold man it will complete the most astonishing comeback in Hollywood.
Back in 1999, Downey Jr. — RDJ to his friends — was sentenced to three years in prison amid his lengthy struggle with drugs.
He had only a “very small” group who continued to believe in him — including his childhood pal Rob Lowe.
Lowe told Page Six this week, “I always thought I was going to be the first person in my Santa Monica history class to win an Oscar, turns out it’s going to be Downey.
“And I couldn’t be happier.”
Downey, now 58, has been sober for years and has been exceedingly open about his past troubles. Last June, he told Dax Shepard that prison was like “being sent to a distant planet where there is no way home until the planets align.”
He first found fame in 1980s hits including “Weird Science” and “The Pick-up Artist” and dated Sarah Jessica Parker. But after he was Oscar-nominated for “Chaplin” in 1993, his career went into free fall.
A source who has known Downey for decades, told Page Six, “Downey’s road to sobriety was a rocky one.
“Not a lot of people stood by his side, it was a very small group, that’s just the reality. It was a couple of dear friends.”
It is, indeed, a true Hollywood story. “They love to put you up at the top to knock the s–t out of you and watch you crawl back up and give you a nice little entryway to get back in and a path to redemption,” the source said.
The actor was first arrested in 1996 for possession of heroin, cocaine and an unloaded .357-caliber Magnum, given three years of probation and required to undergo mandatory drug testing.
A year later, Downey skipped a drug test and spent nearly four months in the Los Angeles County jail. His first wife, Deborah Falconer left him.
After missing another drug test, he was sentenced to three years of prison in August 1999. He served much of the next year in state prison in Corcoran, Calif.
When asked if he had been sexually assaulted while locked up he told Vanity Fair in 2000 that it was “perfectly respectable, to some, to partner up with another inmate” if you were a “lifer.”
During another interview, he said, “I can neither confirm it nor deny it,” before finally denying any assault.
“You could just feel the evil in the air, and that was no trouble at all because it was kind of like just being in a really bad neighborhood,” Downey told Shepard on his “Armchair Expert” podcast, “There was no opportunity there. There was only threats.”
One of the more disturbing incidents before his incarceration involved an intoxicated Downey wandering into a neighbor’s house and passing out in a bed.
He told Shepard, “I’m gonna try to give you the flashcards: I’m in court, I’m being over-sentenced by an angry judge, and at some point he said something in Latin. I thought he was casting a spell on me.”
Although being jailed was one of the “worst” things that had happened to him, Downey said he adjusted after two weeks inside.
“As long as you have a willingness to do harm, it is unlikely that you will be targeted. It really is that thing of what is the difference between acting like you’re willing to do harm and being willing to do harm,” he said.
He even crossed paths with “Will & Grace” actor Leslie Jordan, who was jailed for drunk driving offenses in 2000. The pair had to swap beds and Jordan – who died in October 2022, reminisced they would always have, “152, Pod A, Cell 13, top bunk.”
He was released early in August 2000, but on Thanksgiving weekend he was again arrested for alleged cocaine and Valium possession and being under the influence of drugs but avoided more jail time.
Finally, he was arrested on drugs charges in April 2001 after Los Angeles police found him in an alleyway. That led to him being fired from TV hit “Ally McBeal” — but he was sent to rehab.
Before Downey met his second wife, film producer Susan Levin, whom he calls his “bedrock, touchstone and lucky stars,” he relied on friends including his former agent, Ed Limato, who died in 2020, and Mel Gibson, who hired him on “The Singing Detective” in 2003.
The pair had co-starred together in 1990’s “Air America” and during an American Cinematheque ceremony in Los Angeles in 2012, Downey revealed, “I couldn’t get hired, so he cast me in the lead of a movie that was actually developed for him. And he kept food on the table.”
Downey then stood by Gibson when he became a Hollywood outcast in 2006 when he told a police officer “Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world” following his arrest for drunk driving.
He urged his colleagues to forgive his pal, saying, “Unless you’re completely without sin,” before joking, “In which case you picked the wrong f–king industry.”
He found blockbuster success with 2008’s “Iron Man,” playing superhero Tony Stark. It made $100.8 million in its opening weekend and has spawned a $5 billion Marvel franchise. Downey went on to make millions more in Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” movies.
The Downey source said, “I don’t think Downey will be emotional at the Oscars, I’ll tell you what was more emotional — the opening weekend going into ‘Iron Man.'”
“But you’ve got to be careful when opportunity knocks, addicts don’t always embrace that. Downey has a lot of people trying to make money off him, he’s a commodity. If you breed success, you have to feed a lot of mouths and a lot of studios will come running at you. And these guys are never satisfied.
“They will stay away from you if you’re not hot — it’s the entertainment business, business is the key word.”
In 2009, he was nominated for best supporting actor Oscar for “Tropic Thunder,” and did not even campaign.
Heath Ledger posthumously won the award for his portrayal as the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight.” Nolan also directed “Oppenheimer.”
As for his personal life, Downey, who has a 30-year-old son named Indio with Falconer, wed Susan in a star-studded wedding in the Hamptons in 2005, featuring performances by Billy Joel and Sting. The couple share son Exton, 12, and daughter Avri, 9.
“Susan is his blessing,” said the Downey source.
Downey has so far won a Golden Globe, a SAG award and a BAFTA for “Oppenheimer,” giving a string of pithy speeches.
When he won the Critics Choice award, he quoted from several unflattering critiques of his work. He described one as a haiku: “sloppy, messy and lazy.”
Another compared his performance to “Pee Wee Herman emerging from a coma.” Downey also quoted a British critic who called him “a puzzling waste of talent.”
One final review Downey said, “lingered,” when a critic wrote that he was as “amusing as a bedlocked fart.”
“He’s very fun, very irreverent, that’s how his brain works, ” added the Downey source, “He’s pretty much the smartest guy in the room.
“It’s nice when you can make choices on what jobs to take…That’s when you know you’ve won.”
After all, the source added, “He’s adorable — you can’t not love the guy.”
