Michael Douglas has spent decades playing what he calls flawed American men. In his new memoir, he says that wasn’t much of a stretch.
“One Helluva Ride,” published Tuesday by Grand Central Publishing, is the 82-year-old actor and producer’s first full account of his life, written with Shane Salerno and Michael Fleming Jr., according to publisher Hachette Book Group. The nearly 500-page book is framed around the making of his best-known movies, including “Romancing the Stone,” “Fatal Attraction,” “Basic Instinct” and “Falling Down,” the Associated Press reported.
Living with a legend
Much of the book is about escaping the shadow of his father, Kirk Douglas. In an interview with the Associated Press, Douglas said he saw his father as “just Superman” and never thought he could measure up. He said he could not have written the book while his father was alive, because he was uncomfortable discussing the physical abuse of his early years. “He was of a generation that hit,” Douglas told the AP.
The memoir opens with thanks to his family for a “sense of immortality,” a phrase that came from Kirk. Asked whether he was jealous of his son’s success, Kirk would answer that it was “a continuity of generations,” Douglas recalled. After Michael won his best actor Oscar for “Wall Street,” his father told him he “would have been nicer” to him had he known how successful he would become, the AP reported.
The Los Angeles Times reported that one of the book’s most painful passages describes Douglas, as a young producer, telling his father he was too old to play the lead in “Cuckoo’s Nest,” a role that went to Jack Nicholson. The film won best picture and launched Douglas as a heavyweight producer.
Affairs, addiction and a secret kept for decades
Douglas writes openly about his turbulent first marriage to Diandra Luker and his infidelity. With Kathleen Turner’s blessing, he writes about the relationship the two had while making “Romancing the Stone” in the Mexican jungle — something both denied for years, the Los Angeles Times reported. He also describes an affair with another “Basic Instinct” co-star, Jeanne Tripplehorn, while the press focused on rumors about him and Sharon Stone, which he says were untrue.
He also acknowledges that when he met Catherine Zeta-Jones, whom he married in 2000, he was dating five other women in different cities, the AP reported. He told the AP that rumors he had been treated for sex addiction were false.
The book covers his own struggles with alcohol and drugs, the fight to help his son Cameron, who served seven years in prison on drug charges, and his 2010 diagnosis of stage IV cancer. Douglas told the Los Angeles Times he publicly called it throat cancer at the time, though it was tongue cancer, to head off speculation about disfigurement.
‘I’m the bad guy?’
Asked by the AP which line from his movies comes closest to describing him, Douglas chose one from “Falling Down”: “I’m the bad guy?” He said he has tried to do the right thing but has found himself in situations where it looks like he is the villain.
Now settled with Zeta-Jones, he told the AP he no longer feels a drive to top himself professionally. “Your 80s may be a good time to share,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “For others, it’s just gossip.”
Photo: Cinema Center Films publicity still via Wikimedia Commons (public domain). Michael Douglas in his screen debut, ‘Hail, Hero!’ (1969).
Sources: Associated Press (via Spectrum News NY1); Los Angeles Times; Hachette Book Group.
This article was produced with AI assistance and is based on reporting from Associated Press (via Spectrum News NY1), Los Angeles Times and Hachette Book Group.