Robert Downey Jr saved by his will of iron

Robert Downey Jr has been named the world's highest paid actor

HE PLAYS a much-loved billionaire superhero in Iron Man and Robert Downey Jr may not be too far off from his character now he’s been named the world’s highest paid actor.

 

The Avengers: Age Of Ultron star took home £51million between June 2014-June 2015 to top Forbes’ annual World’s Highest-Paid Actors list for the third time.

The 50-year-old has come a long way from the 1990s when he found himself short of cash and in and out of prison because of his self-destructive behaviour, which he attributed to alcohol and drugs.

At one point he was earning roughly five pence an hour doing washing up in the kitchen of the LA county jail.

In 1996 his female neighbour made an infamous emergency 911 call after she came home to find him apparently high on cocaine and drunk asleep in her 11-year-old son’s empty bed and snoring loudly.

He told a judge: “Taking drugs to me is like having a shotgun in my mouth with my finger on the trigger and I like the taste of the gun metal.”

Now he’s singing a different tune. “I used to say that I’d welcome a bullet to the forehead if I ever ended up as a 40-something, remarried, marketable, big-action movie dad living in a cosy, cul-de-sac in suburban LA. Now I am that guy!”