Michael Douglas has two Oscars — one for producing, the other for acting.
He’s Hollywood royalty, star of many hit films and son of a real movie star, Kirk Douglas.
Douglas is 82, he’s seen and done it all, so he figures, Why not just fess up? In his memoir out today, “One Helluva Ride,” he does just that. And just like the man I’ve talked to a lot over the years, the book is refreshingly honest and clear eyed.
I’m telling you what’s in this book, no judgements. I was in court when Michael Douglas pleaded for leniency for his drug addicted son, who seems to have made a life for himself after a lot of heartache. He’s a good guy.
Let’s cut to the chase. Douglas has a reputation as a ladies man. Already revealed in the last few days — and spelled out in the book — is his long term romance with Kathleen Turner. They made three big movies together, and could not get enough of each other. He was married, but says his wife, Diandra, was having affairs, too.
In the book, Douglas admits that when he finally got serious about marrying Catherine Zeta Jones, he had to dismiss five girlfriends he was seeing at the time. He doesn’t name names, but the exit interviews would be fascinating.
I love the fact that Douglas just spells it out. His big love in the 70s was actress Brenda Vaccaro, who I still see all the time since she moved back to New York. She’s a great lady. Hopefully Michael has told her he was going to write about their relationship — she was close to his family — and how it ended. What happened? She had an affair with his one of his co-stars, Don Stroud, a popular actor at the time.
There were other romances, don’t worry. There was Jeanne Tripplehorn, on the set of “Basic Instinct.”
Douglas writes: “As Kathleen and I had during Romancing the Stone, Jeanne and I took great
pains to hide it from the cast and crew. Due to the controversy surrounding the movie, and the extensive press coverage (and the fact that while separated, I was still legally married), we had to take additional steps for our relationship to not be discovered. That meant mainly just hanging out at the place I was renting during production. We would have dinner there (because we couldn’t go out anywhere), watch TV, or just unwind after shooting. We spent so many hours together, talking, really getting to know each other, enjoying each other’s company away from the set and everything else in the world.”
There are many others, some of whom we know by name, some not so famous. And yes, again, Douglas was married for a lot of that time to Diandra, who’s had her own issues. You had to be around in those days to read about their tumultuous marriage in the tabloids. It was non stop.
In 1992, Douglas checked himself into rehab and announced that he was a sex addict. He writes, “For group therapy, I had to trust total strangers who were all facing
various addictions of their own. It was an incredibly vulnerable state to be in. We all opened up about intimate moments and failings.”
His anonymity didn’t last long. He recalls: “Unfortunately, two of the members of our group violated the most sacrosanct code of rehab. This was during the rise of sinister, nasty tabloid journalism, especially in the UK. It made for good copy and it sold a lot of magazines, even if most of it was complete fiction. “Michael Douglas, Star of Sexual Thrillers like Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct, Is a Real- Life Sex Addict” sells more copies than “Actor Seeks Treatment for Alcohol Abuse.” The story that was printed was utter bullshit. Look, I had made mistakes, had moments I wasn’t proud of, made choices I wouldn’t have if I wasn’t high, but I was never a fucking sex addict.”
He ran with a hot crowd. His best friends were Danny DeVito, and Jann Wenner. But he also spent a lot of time with Warren and Jack. He was part of that mythic “You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again” gang, the last people who had fun in Hollywood. He had a crush on Candice Bergen and knew all the players in the Manson family murders. Douglas even had a brush of his own with serial killers, the “Death Angels,” a group, he notes, “responsible for the deaths of up to eighty-eight people, more murders during that time period than all other serial killers combined. And I was on their list.”
Scary then, cool now, right?
He partied with OJ Simpson, and was backstage the first time Simon and Garfunkel reunited. Once, he told off a young Julia Roberts (circa “Mystic Pizza”), who he thought was hitting on his 13 year old son.
Did I mention that he had a fling with the New York Times writer Maureen Dowd?
Some things don’t come up, including the very public death of his half brother, Eric, from drugs in 2004, at age 46.
Eventually the craziness came to an end. Being the son of Kirk Douglas had not been easy, neither had his skyrocket to fame on TV with “The Streets of San Francisco,” and winning Oscars for producing “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Really popular films like “The China Syndrome” and “Fatal Attraction” only made things worse. So when he did check in for therapy again, and met Zeta-Jones, he finally got some control.
“One Helluva Ride” is one helluva story. It’s divided up in chapters by many of the films, and there is not a boring section. The book also has a satisfying ending: a happy marriage to Zeta Jones, two happy children with her — and the success of son, Cameron. He survived cancer which was sobering to be sure. He even won an Emmy for playing Liberace. Douglas has also been involved in a lot of good works over the years. In the end, his story is about family, as he writes in the dedication: “Past, Present and Future, a continuity of generations, a sense of immortality.”
Bravo!
PS Besides all the obvious hits, check out two other Douglas films I recommend highly: “Solitary Man,” and “Wonder Boys.”
