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Michael Douglas Finds Himself Starting Over
BY LUAINE LEE
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE


It can't be easy, but at 52 Michael Douglas is starting all over again.

Not his career. No, that's speeding along just fine, thanks to movies like "Wall Street," "Fatal Attraction" and his newest thriller, "The Game," opening Sept.12.

But things are less dandy on the personal side. Douglas and Diandra, his wife of 20 years, are divorcing, and he is moving from his longtime home in Santa Barbara to New York.

The son of actor Kirk Douglas, Michael grew up on the East Coast (raised by his mother and stepfather). But he has lived in the West most of his adult life.

"The scary part is over," he says of this sea change. "It's an exciting time, an unknown time about the future - not knowing where it's going to go. One of the benefits of being a little older is that you're truly comfortable with yourself. I think you have to do that. You have to literally be alone to be comfortable with yourself. I'm excited about it."

At the same time, the prospects of the single life after all these years is not without its trepidations.

"I never perceived myself as being a swinger, an active dater," he says, shaking his head and leaning his arm on the brown velveteen love seat.

"I've never been real good at small talk or dealing with multiple relationships or talking to different people. That (attitude) is going to be a little passe. But I think it'll be exciting."

The fact that he's famous and successful could make him a romantic target. But he's not worried about that. "It's like full circle," he says, brushing both hands through his short-cropped, graying hair.

"I used to ask myself as a teen-ager if the girl liked me because of who I was or because my dad was a movie star. I laugh at it now. Now I don't care. I trust my instincts and I'll know soon enough, one way or other. I don't care. If that's important to them, I'll find out about it soon enough."

All sorts of descriptions come to mind when people talk about Douglas: savvy, skillful, smooth and successful.

But Douglas has grazed failure more than once. He flunked out of school and worked in a gas station. He goofed around as a hippie, never even attempting acting until he was 21. And once his TV series, "The Streets of San Francisco," was over, he was just another unemployed actor scrambling to pay his union dues.

"I had my first successes as a producer with 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' and 'China Syndrome,'" says Douglas.

"There was a long period after I did the TV series when I was simply an actor trying to make the transition into feature films. Many people after 'Cuckoo's Nest' and 'China Syndrome' and 'Romancing the Stone' - where I gave myself a part - people said, 'Why are you acting? Why don't you produce?' I know they didn't mean badly, but for me, I wanted to say, 'Well, I think I've got something to offer as an actor.' But I came into myself a little later."

Actually, it wasn't until he portrayed the predatory financier in "Wall Street" - which won him a Best Actor Oscar - and the adulterous husband locked in a nightmare relationship in "Fatal Attraction" that Douglas gained any yardage as an actor. "Once that happened I guess I sort of felt like, well, you're just going to give up producing altogether."

Shaking his head, he says, "In hindsight I wish I had. In hindsight I think it caused a lot of stress on me and my family, people close to me, by trying to do both of these jobs to the extent that I did do. It's taken me this long now to realize how much I love acting and how I don't want anything else to interfere with it. So I'm going to probably cut back in my producing choices."

It took him so long to embrace acting because it was an agonizing experience at first. "I didn't enjoy acting, just the fact of getting in front of the camera was painful and such an effort to overcome. I thought maybe I should think this one over again. If this is the way it's going to be, then this is not the way to live one's life. I was just a slow learner. It took me a long time to become comfortable with that."

He was timid as a kid and credits his stepfather for offering some sage advice. "There was a certain point as a young teen-ager where being shy was pretty effective with the opposite sex," he smiles. "I think he told me one day, 'Shyness is a weakness, and it's something we try to overcome.'"

© 1997 The Sun Herald



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