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A Vote For Love: Despite His Separation, Michael Douglas Still Belives In Marriage
By Wilder Penfield III
Toronto Sun
November 12, 1995


The American President, the new Rob Reiner movie opening Friday, is actually the oldest story in the book. Boy meets girl, etc.

The contemporary spin is that she's an eco-lobbyist and he's the most powerful man on earth.

And when they fall for each other, it's supposed to be romantic and funny. After all, he really is awfully busy.

Annette Bening, 37, happily devoted to Warren Beatty and their two babies, tells me that love was an easy emotion to access.

For Michael Douglas, 51, the role of the scandalously romantic President must have been rather more painful. His marriage is expiring. "My wife and I are separated now," he tells me. "We look back and think how much energy it took to create a couple of the houses we've had. And as beautiful as they are, when your life changes, it's amazing how quick you are to get rid of them."

Douglas fell in love with Diandra Darrid at first sight. It was an enchanted evening, a pre-inaugural party honoring Jimmy Carter. She was across a crowded room.

He was 32, about to win his first Oscar, for producing One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. She was 19, a sophomore at the Georgetown School Of Foreign Service. She was more like his mother Diana in looks, European background, temperament, sophistication and name than like any actress he has fallen for on screen. They felt maybe they had known each other in other lives.

But he also wanted, maybe even more deeply, to make it big as an actor. Like papa Kirk. "Dad used to play the doting father, and came up to the first couple of productions I did in college, and said, `Well, thank God I don't have to worry about him getting into acting!'" Michael is clearly aiming for a laugh, but when he gets it, adds: "I think second generation people tend to be late bloomers. Rob (son of Carl Reiner) and I talk about it a lot."

A pivotal year for Michael was 1987, when he played both Gordon Gekko in Wall Street and the husband in Fatal Attraction. The former won him an acting Oscar, and an image of ruthlessness - its power seemed to transcend acting. The latter launched a reputation as a womanizer - not the suave guy who wooed Kathleen Turner in Romancing The Stone, but the magnetic animal of Basic Instinct and Disclosure.

And he says: "The truth of it is that when you choose to do a film, the rest of your life stops. The work is all-consuming.

"In a strange way, it's a licence to be selfish. And my family has suffered.

"I have my little trailer, and I've spent more time there in this womb-like world than in any one of my homes."

Later he says: "Most people's jobs are just one part of their lives, and their families are the most important part.

"Unfortunately when I'm involved in making pictures it doesn't work that way. And that's very hard for people close to you to have to accept over a long, long time."

I ask: Does he think marriage would be better as a lease operation rather than an ownership deal?

He laughs. "Could well be," he says. "Undeniably people change." Then he adds: "I really believe in the institution. The hard thing now is that there's just so much contact, so much access to so many people ... it's hard to remind yourself of a simpler, more direct time."

I think this movie will remind many people of such times. It certainly brought back something my mom often recalled, that in 1943, when she was a 19-year-old receptionist in New York and Kirk was starring in Kiss And Tell on Broadway, he used to take her dinner-dancing "and that's all" in the Village. The ability of Michael-as-President to dinner-dance decently proves a pivot for the new movie and is now a pivot for its marketing. What about in his life?

"It's one of those lost arts, isn't it," he says. "I'm a big swing dancer, and I love to jitterbug. I was surprised what an effect the scene had on the movie, just asking her to dance. It sounds so simple and corny, and yet you haven't seen it in so long, and how nice it is - it really did stand out."

His moves are nothing fancy, but they have elegance. "And you should see the piece of film I've got of myself dancing with Rob Reiner."

The movie is also about the kind of human values that used to be embraced by Americans as `common' and are now often dismissed as `liberal.' Who are Michael's heroes?

"I'm getting more and more conscious of spiritual satisfaction," he says, "and I'm becoming more and more aware of people who truly live their lives to improve the lives of others, based on love. They are my heroes."

Would he run for President now that he is an expert? "Not as long as I can play it. No, thank you. It's a tough job. Never enough time. Always trying to catch up."

Is that not also the life of a mogul with a dozen projects coming from his production company in three years? "Naah! I'm Chairman. Chairman means that this is my first time down from Santa Barbara in about four weeks. My company is sending me to South Africa next month to work on The Ghost In The Darkness with Val Kilmer, directed by Stephen Hopkins, written by William Goldman. But I finished The American President in April. And before Disclosure I hadn't worked in over a year.

"Well, I'm always working on material. But, you know, material you can work on wherever you are."


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