Downey lives on a quiet cul-de-sac in Los Angeles. The house is filled with contemporary art, including pieces he did himself. On the piano is a picture of Downey costumed as the comic-book superhero he plays in his new movie, Iron Man, opening May 2.

"Look at this!" Downey exclaims delightedly, picking up a plastic doll of himself in Iron Man armor. "I've done something most people thought I'd never do. I've become a leading-man superhero in a big action movie!"

Iron Man, co-starring Gwyneth Paltrow, is the latest of Downey's more than three dozen features. Like the superhero franchises Spider-Man, Batman and Superman, it is expected to be a hugely profitable blockbuster.

"I went after Iron Man because Keanu Reeves got The Matrix, and Johnny Depp got Pirates," he says. "I'm looking at all these posters of the movies I've seen with my son, and I'm thinking, 'Damn! I could do that!'?"

Downey, who says he was "tired of working my butt off doing films nobody sees," also will open later this summer in what he describes as "a very very raucous comedy called Tropic Thunder, with Ben Stiller." In the film, a send-up of Vietnam War movies, Downey wears blackface as an actor playing a black Army sergeant. The part is already inciting controversy. Downey, though, insists it is the kind of role the late Peter Sellers might have done.

When he dropped out of high school and moved to New York, his father wouldn't support him. "That's part of education," he observes, "the moment when your dad says, 'The gravy train is done.'?"

Within a year of hitting New York, Downey began getting work as an actor. In 1984, he joined Sarah Jessica Parker in the cast of the film Firstborn. They were 19 and fell in love.

"We quickly moved in together and played house," he recalls. "It was idyllic." He and Parker settled in Los Angeles, and Downey's movie career took off after his astonishing performance in 1987's Less Than Zero. It established him, at 22, as among the finest actors of his generation. Downey fast developed a reputation as a party boy. It didn't stop him from getting major films, but his self-indulgence subverted his relationship with Parker.

"I was so selfish," he admits. "I liked to drink, and I had a drug problem, and that didn't jibe with Sarah Jessica, because it is the furthest thing from what she is. She provided me a home and understanding. She tried to help me. She was so miffed when I didn't get my act together. I was making money. I was mercurial and recklessly undisciplined and, for the most part, I was happily anesthetized. Sarah Jessica would pull me out of a hangover, and we'd go pick out furniture together." He shakes his head at the memory. "She is a force of nature!"

He and Parker stayed together for seven years. She broke up with him in 1991. "I had very much this post-adolescent, faux nihilistic, punk-rock rebellious attitude," he says. "I thought my way was so much cooler than people who were actually building lives and careers. I was in love with Sarah Jessica," he quietly confesses, "and love clearly was not enough. I was meant to move on. And, after some heartache, she was meant to find her home with a great star." Describing Parker's husband, actor Matthew Broderick, Downey adds, "He is a lot more gifted and grounded than I ever was. They have a great kid."

Shortly after his breakup with Parker, Downey married model Deborah Falconer, and their son, Indio, was born. "Our marriage and having a child probably kept me from going off the rails completely," he says, "but it wasn't enough to right the ship."

"You use whatever rationalization you can to justify the fact that you're not living truthfully," he observes about substance abuse. "You make this death machine seem glamorous so you can get on to the next moment. But it isn't glamorous, and it isn't fun. People rise out of the ashes because, at some point, they are invested with a belief in the possibility of triumph over seemingly impossible odds."

Meeting his third great love, producer Susan Levin, also helped his recovery. "Things started to change when I met my life partner, Mrs. Downey," he says, using Susan's married title as a sweet salute. She told me, 'I'm not doing that [drug] dance with you. I'm drawing a line in the sand here.' She was absolutely clear about it. That doesn't mean that other women, business associates, movie directors, insurance companies, judges and law enforcement hadn't been clear about it too. It was that, before I met Mrs. Downey, I just didn't give a goddamn. What changed is that I cared."

He pauses a moment. "She said, 'We'll build a relationship that works and will last.' I believed her. We were swept up in the promise of that. We live in this commitment to each other. Now it's all about becoming rooted in the mundane, in the day-to-day stuff," he continues. "Life is 70% maintenance. I think of myself as a shopkeeper or a beekeeper. I'm learning the business of building a life. Instead of getting instant gratification by getting high, I push my nose as far into the grindstone as I can. The honey, the reward, is the feeling of well-being, the continuity, the sense that I am walking toward a place I want to go."

Upstairs, his son Indio, now 14, is watching TV. "My son is gifted and artistic and has a great sense of humor," Downey tells me, "yet he's a very contemplative guy. That's good. I don't want him to be in a hurry to find out who he is. I'm a guy who was in such a hurry that I missed the train four or five times. I didn't understand the importance of the crossroads I found myself at. As a dad, I think that my job is to do the right thing — to prepare him for what is coming in his life.

"I used to be so convinced that happiness was the goal," Downey says, "yet all those years I was chasing after it, I was unhappy in the pursuit. Maybe the goal really should be a life that values honor, duty, good work, friends and family."

On His Self-Image