Michael Douglas' life is filled not only with professional successes, but also with tragedies, scandals and threats to his life. In his memoir "A Dizzy Life", the actor reveals details about incidents during filming, the deaths of his colleagues and his struggle with addictions.
Dangerous beginnings and the threat of a criminal gang
Douglas admits that for a long time he perceived his surname as a curse because of the constant struggle to get out of the shadow of his legendary father Kirk Douglas, who died in 2020 at the age of 103. Despite the internal conflict, he chose acting and got his first significant television role in the series “Streets of San Francisco“ in the 1970s.
On the first day of filming, he almost had a serious accident with his partner Carl Malden. Douglas was supposed to drive on a previously secured route, but he did not study it. When he pressed the gas, the car flew into the air after the road suddenly went downhill.
“All four tires left the ground. While we were in the air, I had time to look at Carl, and he - at me&rdash;, the actor recalls. After the sudden stop, he was convinced that he would be fired on the first day. However, Maldon took the incident in good humor and said that it would be an interesting series, before going to change his underwear.
Later, as his popularity grew, Douglas found himself the target of the local gang "Angels of Death", who were found guilty of the murder of 15 people, although some estimates put the number of victims at 88. A police consultant warned him that his name had been mentioned among the group's potential targets. Undercover police officers began working on the set, and the actor sometimes wore a bulletproof vest under his costume, especially when filming among the city's tall buildings. The threat terrified both him and his then-girlfriend Brenda Vaccaro, but both were unharmed.
Incidents and tragedies during filming
Working on the film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest“, in which the main role was entrusted to Jack Nicholson, was also accompanied by disturbing incidents. Real patients from a psychiatric clinic participated in the production. During filming in a medium-security ward, a member of the crew joked that if he were crazy, he would jump out of an open window on the second floor. One of the patients followed his example and jumped, breaking his collarbone.
The tension also affected actor Danny DeVito, who at the time was going through a difficult period due to the separation from his future wife Rhea Perlman. He created an imaginary friend and began to worry that he was losing his mind. Sidney Lasik, who played Cheswick, also had a mental health crisis and had to be forcibly removed from the set. Despite these difficulties, the film was a great success with audiences and critics.
During the filming of the adventure film “Romance of the Stone“ in 1984, an alligator broke free from its protective jaws and bit the trainer. The man escaped more serious injury because the animal bit his “Rolex“ watch. In the commotion, the alligator's tail hit Douglas in the face and knocked him to the ground. The next day, divers found the watch and returned it to its owner. "And the damn clock was still ticking," the actor wrote.
The most difficult moment of his career, however, came before the filming of the sequel "Pearl of the Nile" in Morocco. The plane in which the crew was inspecting the filming locations crashed, and several people died, including the production designer and the production manager.
"I was devastated. We were all devastated. These were not just colleagues. I had personally hired each of them and brought them to work on this film," Douglas recalled. He organized a memorial service and tried to help the families, but he felt that nothing could compensate for the loss. "It was the saddest and most terrible moment of my career. How could we continue?“, he wrote.
Filming continued, but the problems did not stop. According to the actor's account, local authorities withheld mail until they received bribes. The crew also faced a $2 million demand to avoid a six-week quarantine after health officials announced a hepatitis outbreak on the set.
Douglas describes the incident as blackmail. He admits that he has paid bribes before to get his films made, but insists that in this case the hepatitis allegations were untrue. The cast and crew eventually left Morocco on a cargo plane after a production employee stole a customs officer's stamp and stamped their passports himself.
Two serious threats to their lives
During the filming of “Fatal Attraction“ Douglas inadvertently caused a concussion to his co-star Glenn Close. In a scene in which he was supposed to push her against a wall, he used more force than intended. The actor immediately apologized, and after a short break, work continued.
In 1992, Douglas faced a second serious threat to his life. While attending the Oscars to present an award, he was approached by an FBI agent and a Los Angeles police sergeant. They alerted him to information that someone was planning to stab him with an HIV-infected needle.
“This was at the height of the AIDS epidemic, and being stabbed with a contaminated needle would have been a death sentence,” the actor wrote. The officers assured him that there were undercover agents in the audience who would try to prevent an attack. Douglas notified the Academy of the warning and went outside to smoke a cigarette, accompanied by the sergeant. The attack never happened.
Addictions and difficult relationship with his son
That same year, the actor entered a clinic for treatment of alcohol and drug addiction. The decision came after his first wife, Diandra Luker, found him with another woman in a Los Angeles hotel room and gave him an ultimatum: “Treatment or divorce“.
Before his admission, Douglas did not think he had a problem, noting that drug use in Hollywood was widespread at the time. He chose treatment, but three years later Diandra still filed for divorce. In his memoirs, the actor says that before meetings at talent agencies, he would leave $100 in his car, and the employees who parked the cars would put a gram of cocaine in the center console.
He also claims that he used drugs with O. J. Simpson during the latter's football career. He also remembers an incident when he fell asleep after using cocaine, with a straw still sticking out of his nose. At a party after the “Golden Globe“ awards, he got so drunk that he told Julia Roberts to throw her award “where the sun never shines“.
The problems with addictions were repeated by his eldest son Cameron, from his marriage to Diandra. Cameron began abusing drugs in his late teens, and later struggled with an addiction to heroin. In 2010, at the age of 31, he was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to federal drug trafficking and distribution charges.
Although Douglas financed his son's legal defense, their relationship had already deteriorated significantly. The actor admits that he refused to write to him while Cameron was serving his sentence.
He spoke about this pain with the late Rob Reiner, whose son Nick also struggled with substance abuse. “We both had sons with serious drug problems, and at times we felt completely helpless and hopeless. It was a painful confessional conversation for us, but I know we comforted each other in difficult times“, Douglas writes.
The text also states that Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle Singer Reiner were found dead in their home in Brentwood, Los Angeles, in December, and Nick has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with their deaths.
In contrast to this tragic development, Cameron gradually managed to turn his life around. Today, he is the father of two young children and has restored his relationship with Michael. In one of the most difficult moments for the actor, however, his son could not be by his side when he was diagnosed with tongue cancer, as he was in prison at the time.
Source: Lifestyle.bg.