Downey has been doing a lot of cactus hugging trying to stay sober over the last two years. "I would say it was effortless and without incident. The truth is things are gradual. I know that my life hasn't been bad in a long, long time, which is a great thing," he says.

The result is the bright-eyed, handsome 38-year-old who holds court in a Chicago hotel suite. Biceps burst out of a black T-shirt, he's not super-skinny anymore, and the hour he spent in the gym this morning doing martial arts has zapped away all the stress.

The actor is back in a big way this month, playing the title role in The Singing Detective, opening Friday, and a doctor involved with Halle Berry in the mental hospital thriller Gothika, which opens November 21.

"I'm good and I'm getting better and better. I'm working at it really hard," Downey says. "My life is about discipline now, which is a beautiful thing." He adds without prompting, "By eliminating the fear of not knowing what to do, I've actually been able to examine my fears without thinking that I can't control them. Now, I'm in control. I've had a lot of those spiritual 'ahas' in the last year.

"I know now that I'm here for one reason: To reinvent myself," he says. He shakes his head. "I know people will read that and say, 'Great, he has the luxury of being able to say that and this is coming from the guy who has stepped over the line so many times.' Let me be the first one to tell anyone in trouble: You can always move the line."

Downey says that he permanently moved his line. "I don't feel like I'm starting again. I can say the closure of what came before is real," he says. "I have actual confidence this time that the (trouble) is over and there are a bunch of different roads open to me." "Only in America!" he yells, throwing in a joke.

Part of his new program involved cleaning house. Gone are the friends who contributed to his drug use.

"I credit my gal Susie (Levin)," Downey says of the woman who recently became his fiance. "She's not an actress, but a producer. In fact, she produced Gothika. At a certain point, she told me, 'Robert, I'm not trying to run your program. I'm not trying to tell you who your friends should be.' I had one comment for her: 'Why not?' She said, 'Then until you take the training wheels off, all these people are out of your life. You'll never talk to that guy again.' I'd say, 'But we went to high school together.' And she would say, 'So the f--- what? Do I have to call and get rid of him?'"

Downey shakes his head and says the support system has been what he needed. "I've never had someone who has been so grounded and aware or took such an interest in the minutiae of my dysfunctional life," he says, laughing. "It's like she said to me, 'Let's do 300 spring cleanings right now because you're worth it.' That's helped a lot."

It has also helped when it comes to his career. Downey says he's been embraced by Hollywood, which shocks even him. "It's ridiculous how forgiving people can be of artists," he says.

One backer was Gibson, who produced The Singing Detective. "I'm sure he heard, 'Don't do it with him,'" Downey says. "Mel said, 'No, I'm only doing it with him. I will make this happen.'"

Ask him if it was the intense pressure to succeed or just the Hollywood lifestyle that contributed to his using and he digs deep. It didn't help when Downey read that he was among the most talented actors of his generation. "The problem was that my standards were pretty high," he says. "Just because other people believed that I met their standards didn't really do much for me."

Of course, there were times when he didn't live up to certain standards on a film set. Downey brings up the Jodie Foster-directed Home For the Holidays, which he shot when his life was a mess. "Jodie just kept the cameras rolling. She knew I was in trouble personally," Downey says. "She always told me, 'I'm not worried about you on this movie. I'm worried about you on the next one if you think you can do what you're doing now.'"

Someday, Downey says, he might take all the good, bad and ugly and write a book. "As far as I'm concerned, everything that has happened to me has been chapter one," he says. "There's a new show in town now, and things are going to get really interesting from this point on."