My name is Robert Downey Jr. and I’m a germophobic.

According to an observer in the first class cabin on a recent American Airlines flight from Miami to LAX, the Downster may have kicked his drug/booze addiction, but he’s now powerless over germs and his life has become unsanitary.

Downey - who will play manic depressive poet/author Edgar Allen Poe in the upcoming "Poe," kept a big bottle of hand sanitizer on his tray table during the whole flight. And he used it after anyone came up to him to tell him how much they admired him, shake his hand, get an autograph signed or take a photo with him.

Kinda gives a whole new twist to the phrase "clean and sober," don't it?

"Poe," by the way, will be directed by Sylvester Stallone. And yes, I'm serious.

The Oscar nominated actor ("Chaplin") also kept his jacket draped over his seat so that his skin never touched the fabric of the plane seat, which had been previously sat on by oh, lord knows how many unclean passengers. Brrr, we simply shudder to think.

Downey, who said he had been “looking at property” in Miami, snuck into the flight attendants hold during the flight to eat a sandwich.

What, he doesn’t want to be watched while he eats? Germs are one thing. But that’s just weird.

Photo Credits: Dapper neat-freak Robert Downey Jr. with another well-adjusted actor, Keanu Reeves, at the Cannes premiere of their film, "A Scanner Darkly," a paranoid futuristic thriller.
WireImage/Daniele Venturelli