The actor Robert Downey Jr. showed that there’s a very soft side to his character when he’s not wearing the Iron Man getup. The star, best known for his meteoric career renaissance following drug addiction after being cast as the lead in the Marvel superhero movie universe, revealed earlier this week on his Facebook page that his mother had passed away.
Downey Jr. decided to pen a touching tribute to her.
My mom passed away early this week….I wanna say something about her life, and a generic “obit” won’t suffice…
Elsie Ann Ford was born outside Pittsburgh in April of 1934, daughter of an engineer who worked on the Panama Canal, and mother who ran a jewelry shop in Huntingdon, where they settled….a bona fide “Daughter Of The American Revolution.”
In the mid ’50s, she dropped out of college and headed to NY, with dreams of becoming a comedienne. In ’62, she met my dad, (who proposed at a Yankees/Orioles game). They married, had my sister Allyson in ’63 and me in ’65…
There was another “revolution” of sorts going on at that time, of underground counter-culture film and theatre…and with her as Bob Sr’s muse, they jumped in wholeheartedly…
By the mid ’70s, the downside of drug culture caught up with many artists. She was an alcoholic…
As the marriage suffered, she continued to work, but not for long. A recurring role on “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” (’76-’77) was her last paying job…not that she cared, she’d have done it for free.
I remember living with her and her boyfriend Jonas, (who became a second father to me) in a 2 room 5 story walk up in Manhattan after that…Bunsen burner for a stove, cockroaches, broken dreams…
By 1990, she’d had enough, went to treatment, got sober. Just in time to enjoy several decades of heart disease, bypasses, you name it….
While I strived to have the kind of success that eluded her, my own addiction repeatedly forbade it.
In the summer of 2004, I was in bad shape. She called me out of the blue, and I admitted everything. I don’t remember what she said, but I haven’t drank or used since.
She was my role model as an actor, and as a woman who got sober and stayed that way.
She was also reclusive, self-deprecating, a stoic Scotch-German rural Pennsylvanian, a ball buster, stubborn, and happy to hold a grudge.
My ambition, tenacity, loyalty, “moods,” grandiosity, occasional passive aggression, and my faith….
That’s all her…and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
If anyone out there has a mother, and she’s not perfect, please call her and say you love her anyway…
Elsie Ann Downey. 1934-2014
It's a beautiful letter written by a man whose personal troubles are often hidden by his abundance of charm, and it's clear that his mother was a great influence on his life.
