Robert John Downey, Sr. (born 1937) is an American actor, writer and film director. He is known as the director and writer of the cult classic feature film Putney Swope, a biting satire on the New York Madison Avenue advertising world.
Downey is of half Irish and half Jewish descent. Downey is the father of actor Robert Downey Jr. and actress-writer Allyson Downey, both children from his first marriage to actress Elsie Downey. They were divorced in 1975. Downey Sr.'s second marriage, to the actress-writer Laura Ernst, ended with her 1994 death from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He currently lives in New York City with his wife, Rosemary Rogers, whom he married in 1998.
By the age of 22, Downey had served in the Army, played minor league baseball, become a Golden Gloves champion and an Off-Off-Broadway playwright. In 1961, working with the film editor Fred von Bernewitz, he began writing and directing low-budget 16mm films which gained an underground following, beginning with Ball's Bluff (1961), a fantasy short about a Civil War soldier who awakens in Central Park in 1961.
He moved into big-budget filmmaking with the surrealistic Greaser's Palace (1972). His most recent film was Rittenhouse Square (2005), a documentary capturing life in a Philadelphia park.
