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In "A Perfect Murder," the crafty
remake of Alfred Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder" that opened Friday, Michael
Douglas plays a millionaire industrialist who discovers his wife is cheating on him - and
arranges to have her killed.
It is not the kind of role most Hollywood superstars clamor for. It's hard to imagine
Harrison Ford or Mel Gibson ever playing a murderous cuckold - much less one who derives
so much fun out of terrorizing poor Gwyneth Paltrow.
Douglas, however, is right at home in "A Perfect Murder": As an actor, he
prefers shades of gray, if not inky darkness. Douglas achieved his greatest fame playing
morally weak or ambiguous men. Even when they fit into the traditional "hero"
trappings, Douglas' characters are often flawed.
"Too many actors get very concerned about the political correctness of their
roles," Douglas says. "Actresses in particular have a fear of being disliked. It
makes them nervous. I, on the other hand, revel in it."
His enthusiasm is evident on the screen. "A Perfect Murder" is a glossy,
disposable entertainment, but it's also shrewdly effective and hard to resist, thanks
mostly to Douglas' performance. Playing the villain-you-love-to-hate is a trick most any
actor can pull off. It's much harder to seduce the audience by arrogance, selfishness, and
misguided righteousness.
That's what Douglas does in "A Perfect Murder." "The joy of playing a pure
villain is that there is no moral dilemma," he says. "Audiences love them
because we're all caught up by our civility, our social responsibility, our sense of
what's right. It's fun to watch someone who has no sense of that whatsoever just rip it
up. There's a little part in all of us that says `I wish I could do that.' "
Douglas won a Best Actor Oscar in 1988 for his work in "Wall Street" as Gordon
Gekko, a cynical, steel-hearted investment banker who was nothing less than greed
personified. In "The War of the Roses" - perhaps the most bitter comedy about
divorce ever made - he and Kathleen Turner played warring spouses whose hatred for each
other was so intense, they killed each other by film's end.
In the controversial "Falling Down," Douglas gave voice to disenfranchised
middle-class rage, playing a man who snaps under the cacophony of modern society and
stalks off on a rampage through Los Angeles, packing heavy artillery. And in last fall's
"The Game," Douglas starred as a powerful businessman so bitter and alienated,
he had no one to turn to for help when it seemed like he had been marked for murder.
Douglas dives into these characters unapologetically, the way Arnold Schwarzenegger and
Bruce Willis dive into their superhero roles. He doesn't worry about the effects such
villains may have on his off-screen persona, because he's kept that persona purposely
vague.
"I don't think people have been able to label me," he says. "I've been able
to maintain a degree of privacy in my personal life, so (the public) can't really pinpoint
who you are. And I always serve the movie, rather than try to turn it into a star vehicle
to perpetuate whatever my image is. I let the movie be the star, because I learned early
on it doesn't matter how good I am. Unless the movie's good, no one's going to go see
it."
Smoking Marlboro Lights in a Manhattan hotel suite, clad in a black leather jacket, dress
shirt and slacks, Douglas, 53, looks more like a well-heeled accountant than the worldwide
box-office draw that he is. He has his famous father Kirk's defiant jaw line and cleft
chin, and his mane of perpetually tousled hair is instantly recognizable. But there's
still an Everyman quality to Douglas, an accessibility: There's nothing larger-than-life
about him. He's an unlikely movie star.
For a while, he almost didn't become one. After floundering for several years on the TV
series "The Streets of San Francisco," Douglas tried his hand at producing. The
result, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," won five Academy Awards in 1976,
including Best Picture. That film's success led to some big acting roles -
"Coma," "It's My Turn," "Running" - none of which left an
impression.
Douglas appeared in the uncannily prescient "The China Syndrome" in 1979, which
he also produced. But it was a supporting role in a movie dominated by Jane Fonda and Jack
Lemmon. Hollywood had so little confidenc e in Douglas as an actor, he was not allowed to
play the lead in "Starman," a movie he produced (the role went to Jeff Bridges,
who earned an Oscar nomination for it).
It wasn't until the back-to-back box-office hits "Romancing the Stone" (1984)
and "The Jewel of the Nile" (1985), in which he played a rugged adventurer
opposite Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito, that Douglas became a bankable name. But the
movies he's made since then haven't always been such sure things. He's portrayed
straight-arrow types - "The American President," "The Ghost and the
Darkness," "Shining Through" - but those have also been his least
interesting films.
Douglas has fared better in more ambivalent territory, like "Fatal Attraction,"
in which he cheated on his loving wife - and still managed to retain the audience's
sympathies when the one-night stand turned into a nightmare.
In the controversial "Basic Instinct," Douglas starred as a violence-prone cop
who lived happily ever after with an ice-pick-wielding killer (notoriously played by
Sharon Stone). And in "Disclosure," where the issue of sexual harassment was
turned on its head, Douglas played a businessman victimized by his dragon-lady boss (Demi
Moore).
The thematic similarities of those roles - average guy preyed upon by sexually
carnivorous, independent women - led to Douglas being labeled the "Indiana Jones of
the men's movement," a label that lingers today.
"I get rapped about that all the time," Douglas says. "But I'm tired of
women using sexual politics as a defense mechanism. I'm not against women, but I AM in
defense of men." |
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