The sad fact is that more people have read stories of Robert Downey Jr.'s downfall than have seen his extraordinary talents at work on film. Now he is adding another dimension to his actor oeuvre with a surprising debut album. At the Santa Monica studios where he recorded "The Futurist", I hear Downey before I see him, tickling the ivories, singing snippets of his record. His voice is quirky, sometimes landing in Dave Matthews MOR territory, often drawling Nashville way.

Outside, the warm Californian buzz is interrupted by helicopters heading along the coastline. Inside. Downey seems on top form as he leads the way to an office and lights the first of a forest of Camel cigarettes, smiling genially.

I congratulate him on "The Futurist". "Thanks man, really?" he says genuinely pleased and a little surprised. Maybe he expected the usual backlash against actors using their celebrity to peddle their dreadful songs.

But Downey's music is different, full of twists and turns, piano-based but with a jazz unpredictability. As he approaches 40, there is a wealth of life experience poured into the elliptical lyrics. "God grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change," he cries on 'Broken'. "I'm getting there," he smiles now, adding that he is fulfilled for the first time in his life.

Not only is he indulging his musical side but he paints and is in love. He met Susan Levin when she produced Gothika, the horror thriller Downey starred in with Halle Berry in 2003. Two summers ago Downey felt he was "two weeks from being busted" again. Levin seems to have ridden to the rescue. "It's vital to have a good gal," he confirms, "Everyone knows that she would never lie for me. If there was something wrong with me, she wouldn't be here."

Downey is involved in seven upcoming film projects as a result and is so trusted that director/producer friends come to him for advice. If an actor is behaving strangely on set, they describe the symptoms to Downey who pin-points exactly what drug they are on.

"I see guys now who are in trouble and yet it hasn't become public yet," he warns of the upcoming Hollywood generation, "It may never, or it's about to. You know the con man in Catch Me If you Can? The one who did all the scams and now he works with the secret service, I'm that guy!"

He is refreshingly confident about the future but brutally honest about his past. The public has always rooted for Downey, an actor who hit the big time in 1987 playing a doomed drug addict in Brett Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero. His greatest role, that of his hero Charlie Chaplin in Richard Attenborough's Chaplin (1992) landed him an Oscar nomination but life was already on the slide. In 1996 he was ordered into a drug rehab centre and a year later he was jailed by a judge who said he did it to save his life. When he left jail and rehab centres in 2000, he immediately went to work on pre-Sex and the City angst TV show Ally McBeal.

"Do you know what it's like, well, no you don't, to come straight out of jail and onto Ally McBeal? I was still wondering if we were playing handball in the prison yard at lunch time. They asked me if I was going to be OK while offering $115,000 a week. I just nodded. There were others on the show in recovery and they knew I wasn't going to be OK. It just got out of hand. But I gave them a good run, seven or eight episodes before I got high again. Then all that goodwill went out the window and they asked me to take urine tests while someone watched. But who did they think they were messing with? They couldn't threaten me with a urine test after all I'd been through. I found some fake piss. I'm the green beret of liars! It doesn't matter what you say to me, I'm going to nod, smile and then go get loaded."

Downey has l3-year-old son, Indio, from his marriage to actress Deborah Falconer. He reckons that if music paid his mortgage and the alimony, he would give up acting entirely. Maybe being told you are the most talented actor of your generation puts unwanted pressure on a young man. "Er, yeah, I'm still trying to figure that one out" he ponders, "I sometimes think film is an evil, relentless, thoughtless, life sucking machine and the only mistake I'd made was not understanding this earlier on and saving all my dough and retiring." He shrugs, "Then I realise it's the best job I ever had, But if I could make as much money doing music as I have in movies I think I'd give up acting."

Downey's entrance into music is not entirely unheralded, He has been writing songs for 20 years and learnt from the best and the maddest, Jack Nitzche, the legendary nutball arranger for Phil Spector and the Rolling Stones worked on film soundtracks with Robert's father Robert Downey Sr. - "How great is that? They were the completely underground version of Taupin and John."

But it can be no secret that Downey has wasted his own talent, Despite shining in some bad movies he should be heading toward legendary silver screen status by now, "Er, well, wasted?" he stammers, "I certainly have diverted my talent into some irregular areas, But part of my story is wastage, wasting of life and opportunities. Because for some reason or another it's what I chose to do. I can say that personally and professionally I've never been in a better place, But that's in the realm of all things being relative."

Robert Downey Jr. has finally chosen acting, music, love and life.

The album "The Futurist" was released April 25 on Sony BMG.