Robert John Downey Sr.

Robert John Elias Jr. was born in Manhattan and adopted the surname of his stepfather James Downey in order to enlist in the United States Army underage. Emerging in the Greenwich Village underground film scene of the 1960s, he made low-budget, absurd, and fiercely anti-establishment films on 16mm including Chafed Elbows (1966) and No More Excuses (1968).

Downey scored an underground cultural sensation with Putney Swope (1969), a blistering satire in which a Madison Avenue advertising agency accidentally elects its token Black board member as chairman, who promptly replaces the white executives and turns the firm into an irreverent revolutionary enterprise. The film was added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2016. He later directed Greaser's Palace (1972) and acted in Boogie Nights and Magnolia.