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Features
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Greed Is No Longer Good
At this stage in Michael Douglas’ professional life, it’s about a lot more than the size of the potential Hollywood paycheck.
Friday, April 21, 2006 at 9:00 AM
By Brett Buckalew
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Steve Granitz/Wireimage.com
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With the missus...
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A bigger mystery than the whodunit at the center of the new Washington D.C.-set thriller The Sentinel is the question of where its producer and star, Michael Douglas, has disappeared to in the three years since the past two films he’s headlined, The In-Laws and It Runs in the Family.
Douglas first established himself as more than just the son of living legend Kirk Douglas in the ‘70s, when he produced the unforgettable Best Picture Oscar winner One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the acclaimed The China Syndrome, in which he also co-starred along with Jack Lemmon and Jane Fonda. It’s as an actor that he has acquired his largest fan base, with memorable leading man turns in steamy psychodramas (Fatal Attraction, Basic InstinctRomancing the Stone, The American PresidentWall Street, for which he won the Best Actor Oscar, Wonder Boys).
So after roughly three decades of working at a non-stop rate, it came as a surprise when the 61-year-old star vanished from the Hollywood radar. But when Douglas revealed the motivation for this absence during a talk with Film Stew, it turned out to be the most understandable reason possible - real life beckoned, in the form of his two young children with radiant actress wife Catherine Zeta-Jones.
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Jim Spellman/Wireimage.com
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Basic Instinc 2's Sharon Stone
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“It’s just the joy of fatherhood, you know, and just deciding that’s what you wanted to do,” he elaborates. “I’ve got a boy who’s gonna be six, and a little girl who’s [just turned] three, and [it’s] just having a good marriage, and saying, your priorities are changing. So I’d say twenty years ago, it was career first and family second, [just like] a lot of people earlier in their careers. And if you’re blessed and fortunate enough to start a new marriage, a new life, and it’s going great, then that’s the most fun. You’ve kind of been there and done it all.”
Career longevity is a trait that Douglas shares with his Sentinel character, Pete Garrison, an esteemed Secret Service agent who took a bullet for Ronald Regan in the ‘80s. But even after his years of dedicated field work, Garrison can’t avoid the suspicion of his colleagues when a frame-up makes it appear that he’s planning to assassinate the current U.S. President. As Garrison scrambles to find the real mole within the Secret Service who’s planning the murder, he must evade the pursuit of an investigative agent (Kiefer Sutherland) with a personal grudge against Garrison and the agent’s scrappy young protégé (Eva Longoria).
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20th Century Fox
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With co-star Keifer Sutherland
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According to Douglas, The Sentinel was able to lure him away from downtime with his family through its mix of chase-movie thrills and defense-agency verisimilitude. “When you reach a point where you decide to work, you evaluate what’s coming from the outside just as an actor, and what you’d like to do, and what you’re developing inside [as a producer],” he outlines. “And so I said, ‘Let’s do this. I think we can do a really tight, kick-ass picture that’ll have probably more detail than you’ve ever seen before about what goes on behind the scenes with the Secret Service.’”
The fast-paced production, directed by Clark Johnson (S.W.A.T.) and adapted by writer George Nolfi (Ocean’s Twelve) from a novel by Gerald Petievich, moved smoothly thanks in large part to co-stars Sutherland and Longoria, who are accustomed to rapid schedules through their work on their respective weekly TV shows, 24 and Desperate Housewives.
“I embraced and welcomed when we were having a tight schedule on this picture…to have these people come in [with] such a great attitude,” Douglas raves about the two actors. “Kiefer, who’s also a producer on his show, he’s not looking only at his part, [but] looking at how he can help hone the script down. And they’re just a joy to work with.”
Separately, Douglas recently turned down a chance to reunite with Sharon Stone for Basic Instinct 2, replaced by British newcomer David Morrissey. This turned out to be more of a blessing than an insult, as the sequel opened last month to a shameful $3.2-million first-weekend gross and the year’s most scathing reviews thus far.
On why he rejected the offer to step back into Det. Nick Curran’s shoes, Douglas observes, “I just think in general it’s hard 15 years later to do sex in cinema. I think there’s too much between the Internet, what’s on cable television, even Eva’s show—they’ve basically changed the broadcasting standards. It’s really hard to create that kind of feeling that we did 15 years ago.”
But Douglas has too much respect for his former onscreen partner to suggest that Stone has essentially committed career suicide by playing seductress Catherine Tramell again at age 48. “I’ve always had a great relationship [with her],” he attests. “I think as an actress or as an actor, you do what the choices are there in front of you. But that was the one that made the best sense. She’s a very bright lady.”
As for Douglas’ own career choices, admirers of the actor need not worry that he’ll pull another Houdini so soon after his recent break. With a supporting role in this summer’s Owen Wilson comedy You, Me and Dupree already wrapped and the lead in the independent black comedy The King of California now filming, obscurity is no longer an option.
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