Robert Downey Jr. says he felt the safest he’s ever been when behind bars.
“When the door clicks shut, then you are safe,” says the veteran actor, who spent time between 1996 and 2001 in prison for drug use and possession. “There is nothing aside from a rogue correctional officer that can do you harm if you have the right cellie. You are actually in the safest place on Earth. Safe from the intruders.”
For Downey, those intruders were his addictions — which started when his father, Robert Downey Sr., reportedly began giving him drugs when he was just 8 years old, and didn’t stop.
In the new Rolling Stone, Downey, 45, talks about everything from doing cocaine with his dad and even Jack Nicholson, to his eventual downfall into heroin addiction.
Recalling one particularly bad trip after his first time behind bars, the actor says: “It was the only coke that ever tasted as good as the coke I did with my dad and Jack.” The bender led to a heroin spree with the son of a “local phenom.”
“All those years of snorting coke, and then I accidentally get involved in heroin after smoking crack for the first time. It finally tied my shoelaces together.”
Downey admits that when he was low, he was really low.
“Smoking dope and smoking coke, you are rendered defenseless. The only way out of that hopeless state is intervention,” he told Rolling Stone.
Now the actor is looking forward to the future — namely “Iron Man 2” and growing old with his wife, Susan Downey.
Other actresses may feel left behind in Hollywood as they age, but not so for Kristin Davis.
Davis, 45, says her career is doing better than ever before – and it’s all thanks to “Sex And The City.”
The actress said she used to believe she had to achieve her ambitions while in her 20s.
“Remember when we were young, the actresses that we liked?” she said in an interview with Red magazine.
“They were young, even though they seemed older to us. And you thought that you had to make it in your 20s, like if you weren’t going to make it on your 20s, you weren’t going to make it.
“So the fact I would be turning 45 and be the busiest, most successful I’ve ever been is very, very odd.
‘And it is all because of Sex and the City, really.’
Despite her success, Davis said she has had to put up with her fair share of sniping over her appearance.
She said: ‘You get a lot of criticism out in the world or on the internet about how you look.
‘Fat here, fat there. Hippy this, hippy that. That has been my entire career.
‘But never at work. No one at ‘Sex And the City’ has ever asked any of us four girls to lose weight. Thank God.’
Michael Douglas believes his son’s five-year sentence for dealing drugs could be a lifesaver, he said Monday on NBC’s “Today,” describing the prison term as “adequate.” Douglas expressed hope that incarceration would give 31-year-old Cameron Douglas the time he needs to kick the drug habit that has plagued him since he was 13.
“He was going to be dead or somebody was going to kill him,” Douglas said. “My son was a drug dealer, and he tried to kill himself for a while, and I can’t condone his behavior.” Last month, a judge sentenced Cameron Douglas to five years for dealing methamphetamine from a trendy Manhattan hotel.
“It’s going to take that amount of time for him to rebuild and start himself afresh,” Douglas said.
Douglas said his son’s spirit is good but added that the past year’s imprisonment awaiting a sentence has been “really, really difficult.” “With all the mistakes and the disease that Cameron has, he is a great young man,” Douglas said, “and I wouldn’t be supporting him if I didn’t feel that way.” The 65-year-old Oscar winner has accepted a major portion of the blame for his son’s problems, describing himself as an absentee father during Cameron’s youth too concerned with building his career.
Asked by “Today” host Matt Lauer what advice he’d give to other parents whose children might fall prey to drugs, Douglas said, “You have to catch it early. Your options once your children turn 18 are limited.”
It takes more than hip and knee replacement surgeries to stop the queen of the workout video.
Jane Fonda defied her 72 years over the weekend, sliding into her 1980s leotard to host the first annual World Fitness Day in Atlanta.
The Oscar-winning actress looked as trim as ever as she demonstrated her trademark exercise moves in a yellow and black leotard.
‘I’m part of a demographic that’s kind of ignored,’ She said. ‘We have to go into it with guns blazing and be as healthy as possible.’
The appearance comes just a year after she was photographed being pushed round New York’s JFK Airport in a wheelchair.
Fonda had knee replacement surgery last year after wearing of the cartilage in her left knee left bone rubbing on bone.
The surgery followed a hip replacement five years ago and years of painful back problems.
In the past she has succumbed to plastic surgery, going under the knife for breast implants and cosmetic surgery to remove the bags under her eyes.
But more recently she has insisted she is determined to grow old gracefully and naturally and has spoken out about cosmetic surgery.
Fonda became a Hollywood star after her appearance in “Barbarella” in 1968.
— The Associated Press also contributed to this report
lsmith@denverpost.com
