Robert Downey Jr. on Wife Susan: "She is the Font of All Good Things" - Closer Weekly

The main reason Robert Downey Jr. and his wife of nearly a decade, Susan Downey, started their own production company? So they could spend as much time together as possible the two conclude while giving an interview in Team Downey’s roomy three-story headquarters.

Married since 2005, the pair used to have a two-week rule: they couldn’t go more than a fortnight without seeing each other. But after welcoming son Exton in 2012 and learning they were expecting a second child in early 2015, the former routine wasn’t working anymore.

“Our feeling was, if we wanted to spend time together, have a life together, then we should just go ahead and make movies together,” explains Susan, who became a producer long before see met Robert.

The couple in the early days of their relationship circa 2003

Adds the Iron Man star of their operation, “Susan holds one pillar and I hold the other and this creative arc of tension just flows between us.”

But things weren’t always so easy for the duo, who met on the Halle Berry film Gothika in 2003. Robert asked out Susan — who refers to their initial counter as “interesting but weird” — three times before she agreed to a date. And he credits the brunette beauty for helping him remain sober.

The infamous drug addict, who was in and out of rehab and jail in the ’90s, claims “the exit strategy [from drug use] was in process” when he met Susan, who appeared to be his complete opposite in every way.

She was an honor student who graduated summa cum laude from USC. He was a Santa Monica High School drop-out who smoked his first joint at the age of 8. But Susan gave him the benefit of the doubt.

“Addiction was so foreign to me,” she shares. “I was incredibly ignorant of the hold it had on people.” Adds Robert, “Thank God for that. If she knew the depths of my depravity, we would not be sitting here.”

Referring to their union as his “Great Transition,” the 49-year-old fully credits his wife for keeping him on the right track. “She is the font of all good things,” he sweetly says.

But Robert isn’t the only one to be positively affected by their partnership. Susan admits her Oscar-nominated husband also changed her life for the better.

“I was very focused, driven, rigid, work-oriented. I didn’t care about having a family or making a home. I didn’t think about kids. It’s not that I didn’t want those things, I just didn’t think about them,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter.

“And then I had someone who came in as a tornado, this creative, beautiful ball of insane energy and passion. And it completely opened me up.”

Read more about the couple at hollywoodreporter.com.