The role Robert Downey Jr's drug-addict father played in sending him off the rails - Daily Mail

Robert Downey Jr was only six years old when he took the first step on his chaotic path to drug addiction and prison.

His father had spotted him sipping a glass of white wine during a poker night at the family home in New York.

Such was cult film-maker Robert Downey Sr’s unorthodox approach to childcare.

Far less well known than his Hollywood-star son — who overcame his demons to become the world’s highest-paid actor — Robert Downey Sr was a maverick director who was also a hopeless drug addict for much of his life?

When he wasn’t handing his son narcotics, Downey Sr was taking little Robert off to watch X-rated films and even casting him — from the age of five — in his own disturbing and far from child-friendly movies.

The younger of two children, Downey Jr was born in Manhattan, New York City, in 1965 and raised initially in the bohemian neighbourhood of Greenwich Village, where he says he was ‘surrounded’ by drugs at home.

Referring to his dismal upbringing, Downey Jr says at one point: ‘I think we would be remiss not to discuss its effect on me.’.

The younger of two children, Downey Jr was born in Manhattan, New York City, in 1965 and raised initially in the bohemian neighbourhood of Greenwich Village, where he says he was ‘surrounded’ by drugs at home.

Robert Downey Jr was only six years old when he took the first step on his chaotic path to drug addiction and prison.

Although he influenced a generation of younger filmmakers, Downey Sr’s films were never commercially successful and the family lived hand-to-mouth in a cramped converted loft.

His father claimed he made an X-rated bonkbuster, The Sweet Smell Of Sex, only to pay the medical bills for the boy’s birth.

In LA, family friends such as Jack Nicholson, Peter Sellers and Alan Arkin regularly visited a home where cannabis, Downey Jr says, ‘was a staple, like rice’.

Eventually, says Downey Jr, drug-taking became the only way his befuddled father knew how to connect with him.

His parents divorced in 1978 — when Robert was 13 — and he initially moved with his father to Santa Monica, California.

They lived together for five years before Downey Jr’s drug addiction destroyed their relationship.

His father joked — with some cheek in the circumstances — that he kept track of his son by reading the scandal-packed National Inquirer.

The question is, would any of it have happened if Downey Sr hadn’t given his six-year-old son that first cannabis joint all those years ago