“I did meet Darth Vader, for like a minute,” Susan acknowledges, “right after the movie wrapped, and I said immediately, ‘This isn’t gonna work.’ I made it clear that to stay with me, nothing could happen.”

Something about Susan’s ultimatum clicked. Around July 4, 2003, Robert stopped at a Burger King on the Pacific Coast Highway, threw his drugs in the ocean, and decided that he was done for good. “I think he saw what we had,” Susan says. “There was something magical there, something we couldn’t put our finger on. He always says that we became this third thing when we got together — something that neither of us could have become by ourselves — and I think that’s true.”

Indeed. Talking to Robert, you can actually feel what a tremendous kick they get out of each other. “There’s something about her that is so pure and … right,” he says. “But then there’s the other stuff too, the shadowy side of her that is delightful and that she shows only to me.”