Robert Downey Jr. spent a decade as the face of a multi-billion-dollar franchise and recently took home a well-deserved Academy Award. No matter how you slice it, the actor is doing well, which makes it easy to forget that there once was a time when he was persona non grata in Hollywood, a fate shared by Mel Gibson.
Mel Gibson found his career on the rocks following a 2006 arrest for driving under the influence, which saw him making disparaging remarks about Jewish people, but he had a supporter in Robert Downey Jr. In Esquire‘s recent cover story on Downey Jr., Gibson praised his friend for coming to his defence.
“One time, I got into a bit of a sticky situation where it kind of ended my career. I was drunk in the back of a police car and I said some stupid shit, and all of a sudden: blacklisted. I’m the poster boy for canceled,” Gibson explained. “A couple of years into that he invited me to some kind of award he was getting—we always had this kind of seesaw thing, where if he was on the wagon, I was falling off, and if I was on the wagon, he was falling off. So I was pretty much nonexistent in Hollywood at the time, and he stood up and spoke for me. It was a bold and generous and kind gesture. I loved him for that.“
The event Gibson speaks of was the American Cinematheque Awards ceremony in 2011. During his speech, Downey Jr. called upon those in attendance to join him in “forgiving my friend his trespasses, offering him the same clean slate you have given me, and allowing him to continue his great and ongoing contribution to our collective art without shame,” adding “unless you are completely without sin, in which case you picked the wrong f***ing industry.“
Of course, Downey Jr. had his own struggles, getting arrested multiple times for drug possession in the late ’90s and ultimately serving time in prison. While he had numerous roles throughout the 2000s, he didn’t truly bounce back until the release of Iron Man in 2008.