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When news broke last week that Robert Downey Jr has pocketed a staggering $100 million (£75 million) for his next two films, it stunned Hollywood.

For the Marvel Studios deal did more than confirm his status as the highest-paid actor of all time – it marked one of the most extraordinary redemption stories in entertainment history.

After being hailed as one of the brightest talents of his generation, the actor plunged into drug addiction so severe he was thrown in jail multiple times and was reduced to earning eight cents an hour scrubbing pans inside Los Angeles County Jail.

Back then, in the late 1990s, it must have seemed unthinkable to the now 61-year-old Iron Man star that he would, one day, topple screen icon Tom Cruise from the top of Tinseltown's highest-paid list. Cruise earned $46million (£34million) for last year's blockbuster Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.

Downey took to the stage at San Diego's Comic-Con last weekend to a thunderous roar from fans to tease his upcoming film Avengers: Doomsday, which will be released in December and marks his first $50million payday for one movie.

His second gigantic cheque will come in the sequel Avengers: Secret Wars, due next year. In both films he'll play the green-cloaked icon of comic book villains: Doctor Doom.

Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey at the 14th Governors Awards in Los Angeles in January 2024

The actor is pictured in a promotional film for Iron Man 3, which was released 13 years ago

A source at Walt Disney Studios, which owns Marvel, says: 'Fans loved him as Tony Stark in the Iron Man films, so when it came to choosing someone to lead the Doctor Doom films there was only one choice.

People are raising their eyebrows at his $50 million-a-movie salary but he's worth every penny. He's made ten Marvel films as Iron Man and they've earned more than $12 billion at the box office. There's no one else on the planet who can do that.'

But while Downey's ascent from the gutter of drug addiction to the stratosphere of movie-making has been remarkable, Hollywood insiders know who really pulled him from the brink of destruction – his formidable wife Susan.

One woman who lives close to the couple's futuristic pod-like eco-home in Malibu told The Mail on Sunday: 'Robert would not be alive without Susan. Period.

'You never see them apart. She's very much the power behind the throne. She's a beautiful woman on the outside and they have a gorgeous family and a charmed life but there's no doubt in anyone's mind that, if Susan hadn't picked him, he'd be in the gutter or worse by now.

'She rules him with a rod of iron, in the nicest possible way. She's given him two beautiful kids, a gorgeous home and – most importantly – stability.'

At a party hosted by Downey, the source, who has known him since the 1990s, asked if he'd ever be tempted by drink or drugs again. 'He waved his arm in the air and said, 'Why would I risk this?'.'

The woman says Susan, 52 – a successful producer in her own right when she met Downey on the set of the 2003 film Gothika – has never once doubted that the man she fell in love with could conquer his demons.

'When she started dating him everyone thought she was nuts,' the woman says. 'Robert has always been a lovely guy but he was like a wounded animal.

'He was a terrible addict. He'd go to rehab and get clean for a while, and that happened multiple times, but then he would fall off the wagon and you knew it was only a matter of time before you'd turn on the news and see him being hauled away in handcuffs.'

Downey Jr. is escorted out of court after being sentenced to three years in prison for violating probation from a 1996 drug conviction

On one infamous occasion in the mid-90s, known as the 'Goldilocks incident', Downey stumbled into the wrong home in Malibu while high on cocaine and fell asleep in an 11-year-old boy's bed. Thankfully the child was away.

The recording of the boy's mother's 911 call to police has become part of Hollywood folklore because Downey's loud snoring can be heard in the background.

Another time, he was arrested for driving his Porsche naked down Sunset Boulevard – throwing imaginary rats out of the window.

During one court appearance he told a judge: 'Taking drugs to me is like having a shotgun in my mouth with my finger on the trigger, and I like the taste of the gun metal.'

The friend says: 'I don't think anyone but Susan could have cleaned him up and kept him clean.'

And it is this feat of marital perseverance that has helped Downey rise to the top of the industry that very nearly consumed him.

Indeed, when Downey won his Oscar in 2024 for his role in Oppenheimer – playing the nuclear scientist's government nemesis Lewis Strauss – he did not shy away from his troubled past or his love for the woman who saved him.

As he clutched the golden statuette, Downey said: 'I'd like to thank my terrible childhood and the Academy, in that order. I'd like to thank my veterinarian – I mean wife – Susan Downey, over there. She found me, a snarling rescue pet, and you loved me back to life. That's why I'm here.

The couple are pictured arriving at the 2024 Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverley Hills, March 2024

While many of Downey's legion of younger fans have no recollection of what he has called 'my dark years', those of us who were around in Hollywood in the 1990s and 2000s will never forget.

Back then, Downey was already a bonafide star thanks to roles in films such as Natural Born Killers and his brilliant performance in Richard Attenborough's 1992 film Chaplin.

But his drinking and drug abuse put him on an all-too familiar path to career destruction and worse – one walked by River Phoenix in the early 1990s, and Heath Ledger and Matthew Perry more recently.

As if tempting fate, Downey would hang out at Hollywood's most notorious nightspot, The Viper Room, where Phoenix died of a drug overdose in 1993.

He dated Sarah Jessica Parker, long before her Sex And The City fame, and I would see them together at clubs – The Roxbury on Sunset Boulevard was another favourite haunt – her hanging on to his arm for dear life.

She eventually dumped him and returned to Manhattan.

Downey was never a 'nasty' drunk. One night at a famous hotel off the Sunset Strip he fell asleep at a table, woke up with a jolt and then invited everyone back to his room to continue the party.

He had flings with actresses Marisa Tomei and Jennifer Jason Leigh, and was always surrounded by a group of gorgeous girls – and boys. He would later give an interview in which he said 'I think that everybody is bisexual.'

Downey Jr. accepts the Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer

The actor is pictured here in a police mugshot from September 1999 at the California Department of Corrections

There was a brief marriage to the musician Deborah Falconer in 1992. She gave birth to their son, Indio, the next year. While friends say Downey has since 'gone out of his way' to sober up and 'be a good dad' to his eldest child, sobriety in the 1990s was never his strongest suit.

One says: 'He was a sweetheart, but he always pushed it to the limit. I've never seen anyone snort lines of coke like Bobby.'

Downey's father, Robert Sr, was also a familiar face on the 'scene' back then. He was an independent filmmaker, and I would often bump into him at art events around town.

Downey Sr was a self-professed bohemian who married Elsie, a would-be actress, and raised their son and daughter Allyson – 18 months older than her brother – in a chaotic world of drugs and partying in Greenwich Village, New York.

The couple eventually divorced and Downey Sr headed West with his young son in tow.

When he was six, Downey was caught by his father sipping white wine from a glass left on a kitchen counter. In an appalling act of parenting, Downey Sr told his son he 'ought to try a little of this instead' as he passed him a marijuana joint.

The actor later confessed: 'When my dad and I used drugs together it was him showing me love in the only manner he knew.'

For years, Jr and Sr had a turbulent relationship. I remember sitting with Downey Sr after an art opening in the mid-'90s. A jazz band was playing and Sr was smoking something pungent. He told me: 'I love my son, but it's complicated.'

When I asked him to elaborate, he laughed and told me to 'relax'.

His son had just been found passed out in a rat-infested alley behind a Hollywood hotel.

At his lowest ebb, friends tried repeatedly to help Downey, with Sean Penn and Dennis Quaid paying for him to attend a rehab facility in Arizona.

Jobs came and went. He landed a part on Ally McBeal, then one of the biggest TV shows in the world, but was fired because of his addiction issues and lost his house in Malibu.

He was arrested in a hotel room in Palm Springs with three bags of cocaine, a .357 Magnum and a Wonder Woman costume.

In 1999, he was sentenced to three years in state prison for repeatedly violating probation on drugs and weapons charges. He would only serve one year but has talked about how in jail he 'woke up in pools of blood' following fights with inmates, looking to goad their new celebrity convict.

He called himself 'the poster boy for pharmaceutical mismanagement'. In 2001, Downey pleaded no contest to possession of cocaine and, because of his long history of drugs offences, was sentenced to three years' probation.

While details of Downey's long-term recovery are, of course, confidential, the actor told one interviewer that after meeting Susan Levin in the summer of 2003, he fell deeply in love.

Downey Jr has made ten Marvel films as Iron Man and they've earned more than $12billion at the box office

She was the polar opposite of Downey, having grown up in Chicago, the daughter of a wealthy businessman. Her mother ran the parent-teachers' association. Susan has never smoked a cigarette let alone taken any illegal drugs.

She reportedly gave him an ultimatum: choose the drugs or me.

He dumped his stash into the Pacific Ocean outside a Burger King and duly proposed to Susan on the eve of her 30th birthday.

One person who has known him for 20 years in recovery said: 'He found a great group of people who have supported him ever since and Robert has given back. He has helped countless other people with their recovery.'

For her part, Susan rarely gives interviews, preferring to stay out of the limelight with their son Exton, 14, and daughter Avri, 11.

A friend of the Downeys says: 'You would be hard-pressed to find a closer family. Robert and Susan are devoted to their kids. They go to everything. He's very low-key. You would never know he's one of the biggest stars on the planet.'

In a rare interview with the Hollywood Reporter in 2014, Susan told how she insisted on a two-year engagement. She said: 'Addiction was so foreign to me. I was incredibly ignorant of the hold it had on people.'

They were married in 2005, and it was Susan who encouraged her husband to go for the Iron Man job. A friend says: 'Robert is a 'proper' actor. This was before the days when Marvel was cool.

'Him taking it was a big risk. He didn't want to do a comic-book character. Susan told him to take it. That was a major turning point.'

They set up a production company, Team Downey, with Susan saying: 'Our feeling was, if we wanted to spend time together, have a life together, then we should just go ahead and make movies together.'

About her part in her husband's recovery, she remains modest, saying her role was 'small' but emphasising the importance of 'creating an alternative world for them that says, 'Hey, I'm here if you're clean.'

But to the Downeys' friends, Susan's input remains life-saving.