He could have used superhuman strength.
Robert Downey Jr. is opening up about his 12 months in prison — and why it was the “worst thing” that ever happened to him.
“I’m gonna try to present you the flashcards: I’m in court, I’m being over-sentenced by an indignant judge, and in some unspecified time in the future he said something in Latin,” Downey, 58, recalled during Monday’s episode of the “Armchair Expert” podcast with Dax Shepard and Monica Padman.
“And I assumed he was casting a spell on me,” he continued.
In 1999, the “Iron Man” star was sentenced to a few years in California’s Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison after he did not undergo court-ordered drug tests stemming from a 1996 cocaine possession charge.
Nevertheless, he only served one 12 months, getting an early release in 2000 after posting bail.
The Oscar-nominated actor explained that he was transferred to a “receiving center” while awaiting prison.
He dubbed it “arguably essentially the most dangerous place” he’d ever been because prisoners at different risk levels were kept together.
“You possibly can just feel the evil within the air, and that was no trouble in any respect since it was type of like just being in a extremely bad neighborhood,” the “Sherlock Holmes” actor recounted. “There was no opportunity there. There was only threats.”
While he was there, he received some “strong chuckles and jeers” at some point from his fellow inmates on the approach to the shower, as he had his underwear on backwards.
Downey was eventually transferred to the substance abuse facility, admitting that it took him around two weeks to finally accept and understand his situation.
“We’re programmed to, inside a brief period of time, find a way to regulate to things which are seemingly unimaginable,” Downey mused.
“And for me, there’s worse things that might have happened than being sent to an establishment, by far,” Downey added. “Nevertheless, we are able to only go by what we all know, and I’d imagine if I needed to guess, that was the worst thing that happened to me.”
After his release in 2000, he went to a rehab facility.
Downey has battled drug and alcohol addiction for many of his life, claiming his experience with substances began when he was just 6 years old.
In 2001, he was arrested again, in Culver City, California, after being suspected of being under the influence of medicine. He was sentenced to a few years of probation and one 12 months in a drug rehab program.
He has been sober since 2003, throwing his drugs within the ocean near a Burger King on the Pacific Coast Highway after his eventual wife, Susan Downey, gave him an “ultimatum.”
The couple married in 2005.
“I feel he saw what we had,” Susan, 49, told Vanity Fair in 2009. “There was something magical there, something we couldn’t put our finger on.
“He all the time says that we became this third thing once we got together — something that neither of us could have turn into by ourselves — and I feel that’s true.”
Downey has three kids: sons Indio, 29, and Exton, 11, and daughter Avri, 8.
His latest movie, Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” is due out next month.
