Robert Downey Jr. Says One Year in Prison Was Like “Being Sent to a Distant Planet”
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Robert Downey Jr. says being sent to prison in 1999 was “the worst thing that happened to me.”
The Iron Man star opened up about his time in a California state prison during a Monday episode of the Armchair Expert podcast. While speaking to friend and podcast co-host Dax Shepard about his father dying, his “third act” and his new Max show, Downey’s Dream Cars, he opened up about his year in prison during the late ’90s.
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While speaking about his own denial of his substance-abuse issues, Downey recalled being “over-sentenced by an angry judge” and being sent to North Kern State Prison in Delano, California. Described by the actor as a “receiving center where they decide where you’re going to go,” he called it “arguably the most dangerous place I’ve ever been in my life” because, he says, inmates of various security levels are kept together.
“You could just feel the evil in the air, and that was no trouble at all because it was kind of like just being in a really bad neighborhood. There was no opportunity there. There was only threats,” he recalled.
While there, he says he at one point was “spun out” and elicited “chuckles and jeers” after he entered a shower with his underwear on backward. After that, he was transferred to the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison. From there, he said, it took him two weeks to accept the reality of why he was there.
“We are programmed to, within a short amount of time, be able to adjust to things that are seemingly impossible,” he said. “And for me, there’s worse things that could have happened than being sent to an institution, for sure. However, we can only go by what we know, and I would imagine if I had to guess, that was the worst thing that happened to me.”
While inside, he said that the general tone was that “as long as you have the willingness to do harm, it is unlikely that you will be targeted.
“It really is that thing of what is the difference between acting like you’re willing to do harm and actually being willing to do harm,” he continued.
In 1999, Downey was initially sentenced to three years in the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison, after missing a number of court-ordered drug tests tied to a 1996 cocaine possession charge. He would end up only serving a year, after getting early release in 2000 on the condition of posting bail.
On the podcast, Downey said the closest thing he could associate it with was “being sent to a distant planet where there is no way home until the planets align.”
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