MICHAEL DOUGLAS EXCLUSIVE Wall St director thought I was high
Jibe spurred star to win Oscar
FILM legend Michael Douglas has revealed how he was accused by director Oliver St one of being high on drugs during his Oscar-winning performance in Wall Street.
Michael, 72, said he was left speechless when the film-maker told him he was doing a terrible job on the flick, released 30 years ago.
He was so upset at his treatment by Army veteran Stone that he pushed himself harder to make baddie Gordon Gekko nastier.
Michael said the outburst came after he had filmed the famous scene where the corporate raider brags about his fortune to Charlie Sheen’s young stockbroker character Bud Fox in the back of his limo.
“Oliver said, ‘How are you feeling?’ I said, ‘I am feeling good’. He said, ‘Michael, are you doing drugs?’ I said ‘No’. He said, ‘ Because you look like you have never acted before in your life’.
“I say, ‘Oliver, I thought it was pretty good.’ Oliver wanted just a little bit more anger.
“And I went to town after that , I worked my ass off,” Michael said.
Partly thanks to Stone, 70, he won the Best Actor Oscar in 1988 – beating pal Jack Nicholson, William Hurt and Robin Williams.
Michael added: “You look back at Oliver Stones’s career - Jimmy Woods in El Salvador, Charlie Sheen in Platoon, Tom Cruise in Born On The Fourth Of July, Kevin Costner in JFK, Val Kilmer in The Doors - and every actor has probably given their best performance with Oliver Stone.
“Because, whether it is his Vietnam mentality, he wants you in the trenches with him.
“He is not a patriarch figure like a lot of directors. He challenges you and so I am deeply grateful for Oliver for the opportunity and it helped me achieve what he wanted to see.
Spartacus
Michael – wed nearly 17 years to Catherine Zeta Jones – revealed that for many years Hollywood never saw him as a “romantic lead” despite huge success in hits like Romancing The Stone and Fatal Attraction. But Wall Street helped him step out of the shadow of his dad, Spartacus legend Kirk, now 100 years old. They remain close and, when in LA, Michael stays at his dad’s guest house above their Beverly Hills mansion. He said Kirk “became a better man” after a stroke, and almost dying in a copter crash 30 years ago. “He started asking, ‘Why am I alive?’ That brought him back to his Judea roots. He got together with a rabbi and studied the Old Testament, chapter by chapter. And it totally changed my father as a man. “He was a hard, tough working guy and it brought an immense spirituality to his life, and it is amazing.”