entertainer of the year 2008 - part 2

Let's just say the '90s weren't Robert Downey Jr.'s decade. He drove naked down Sunset Boulevard, throwing imaginary rats out his car window. He got arrested for trespassing when he mistakenly wandered into a neighbor's house and passed out in the kid's bedroom. He served nearly a year in a California state prison for drug possession, and then did eight months on Ally McBeal, until he got booted from the show after he got busted a couple more times, once in a hotel room in Palm Springs with cocaine and a Wonder Woman costume.

Yet here he is today, on this drizzly October afternoon, padding around a Mayfair mansion so fancy it's got a swimming pool — no joke — in the kitchen. ''Nice, huh?'' Downey says, pausing at the architectural oddity during a tour of his digs. ''I could put a couple of folding cots in here and I'd be all set. That's all I'd need. I could live in the kitchen.'' He's lived in worse. But since court-ordered drug treatment in 2001 — and his marriage to producer Susan Levin in 2005 — Downey has kept ''the bad dog,'' as he refers to his darker side, on a short leash. ''It's not about placating the bad dog — it's about feeding the good dog,'' he says of the struggle. ''You still have to feed the bad dog, but only enough so that the ASPCA doesn't bring you up on charges.''

These days, Downey's drug use is limited to nicotine, along with the brain boosters and other macrobiotic concoctions cluttering his coffee table. But you can still see Downey unleash all his canine energy — not to mention puppy-dog charm — on the screen, even when playing the sorts of roles that don't normally require more from an actor than looking fine in a crime-fighting costume. ''Why did people go see Iron Man?'' asks Downey's Soloist costar Jamie Foxx. ''They went to see Iron Man because Robert Downey Jr. was in it. That's why I went. I saw it at a screening in Beverly Hills. I was sitting next to Warren Beatty, and Warren leaned over and said, 'I've known Downey since he was a kid.' People in this town are really rooting for this guy. Not just because they like him, but because he's great as an actor.''