Longtime film producer Susan Downey talks with BuzzFeed News about how she’s navigated the movie business by avoiding as much drama as possible, and her latest venture, a production company with husband Robert Downey Jr.
Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey at the gala premiere for The Judge at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 4
Mark Blinch / Reuters
Like so many starry-eyed teenage girls in the 1980s, Susan Downey had a poster of Tom Cruise on her bedroom wall. But it wasn't a dreamy pinup of the actor from teen-bait fare like Risky Business or Top Gun. Downey had cajoled her local Chicago suburb movie theater into giving her a giant promotional banner for Cruise's character-driven family drama Rain Man.
"I had a poster in my room of all the Academy Award-winning movies [for Best Picture]," Downey told BuzzFeed News last month at the Toronto International Film Festival. "Whenever there would be a new one, I'd make my mom go get it for me. I loved entertaining, big Hollywood movies."
And that childhood passion has come to define Downey's entire life. It guided her to a prestigious film school, and into a sturdy, successful career as a movie producer (The Reaping, The Invasion, The Brave One, Orphan, Whiteout, The Book of Eli, Unknown) with mega-producer Joel Silver. All told, the films she's worked on have grossed nearly $1.2 billion domestically, and $2.7 billion worldwide.
When asked to describe her style as a producer, Downey smiled wryly. "I have no idea why, and this is other's observations of me — I tend to be in the realm of these very complicated personalities," she said. "I guess I enjoy corralling that."
Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall, and Dax Shepard in The Judge
Claire Folger / Warner Bros.
Downey's accomplishments — enviable for anyone aspiring for genuine success as a Hollywood producer — are important to acknowledge, because, for many, her biggest achievement is helping to transform her husband, Robert Downey Jr., from a drug-addled washout into the most valuable movie star in the world.
The timeline of Robert's career resurgence — the embarrassing arrests in the 1990s, the nearly year-long jail term in 2000, the hard-won sobriety and standout roles in films like 2005's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and 2007's Zodiac, and the career rocket fuel that was 2008's Iron Man and all it's wrought — is well-trod territory, a great Hollywood comeback story told time and again. But it's one that may not exist if Susan was not in Robert's life, not only as his wife, but also as a tenacious and meticulous film producer.
The couple first met while working on the 2003 psychological horror film Gothika — it was Susan's first movie as a full-fledged producer, and it was one of Robert's first roles after he was fired from the Fox series Ally McBeal following two post-jail drug arrests. Since then, Susan has overseen most of Robert's non-Marvel movies, either as an executive producer (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, 2010's Due Date), or as the film's main producer (2009's Sherlock Holmes and its 2011 sequel, his biggest non-Marvel hits by far).
This Friday, the couple's latest collaboration, The Judge, will open. The character-driven family drama, directed by David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers), follows a heavyweight lawyer (Robert Downey Jr.) who reluctantly returns to home after his mother's death, and even more reluctantly agrees to defend his estranged father (Robert Duvall), a local judge, after he's accused of murder. Not only is the film the first time the Downeys have produced a film together (Robert is an executive producer), it is the inaugural film from the production company the Downeys founded in 2010, aptly named Team Downey. "We met about 12 years ago, and it feels like we've been working together ever since. Team Downey just made it official," said Susan.
"Over lo these many years, I've recognized through her eyes what an exhaustive, largely thankless, and hilarious job it is to be a creative film producer," Robert told BuzzFeed News via phone. "Underneath it, you have to love movies so much that you can tolerate the expenditure of energy." How Susan has — and has not — chosen to expend that energy makes plain that she hasn't just been able to tame her husband, but much of Hollywood in the process.
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