Robert Downey Sr. Dies

Robert Downey Jr. is mourning the man who brought him into the world—and into the acting business. The Iron Man star said Wednesday that director, producer, and actor Robert Downey Sr., had died Tuesday, two weeks after his 85th birthday, People reports. "Last night, dad passed peacefully in his sleep after years of enduring the ravages of Parkinson’s," Downey Jr. said in an Instagram post. "He was a true maverick filmmaker, and remained remarkably optimistic throughout." He joked: "According to my stepmoms calculations, they were happily married for just over 2000 years."

Downey Sr., born in Manhattan in 1936, was a renowned maker of independent counterculture films in the '50s '60s, and '70s and was best known for 1969's Putney Swope, a satire of the advertising industry, and 1972 "acid western" Greaser's Palace, the BBC reports. In 1970's Pound, he gave the 5-year-old Downey Jr. his first acting role. Downey Jr. also appeared in his father's 1990 comedy Too Much Sun, reports CNN. In 2001, Downey Sr. spoke to the New York Post about his son's struggles with cocaine, a drug he had quit 20 years earlier. "Life is too easy when you're a movie star. People will do anything you want and get you anything you want," he said. "Hollywood is a horrible place." (More Robert Downey Jr. stories.)