Hollywood’s Wall Street Icon

2010 will go down as one of the most remarkable years of legendary actor Michael Douglas’ life, and in more ways than one. He proves to still be a power player on Wall Street, reprising his 1987 Oscar-winning role as greedy corporate raider Gordon Gekko in the contemporary sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, with co-stars Shia LaBeouf, Carey Mulligan, and Josh Brolin. The reactions to the movie have been positive and the number of fans investing in it has been great—Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps opened as the No. 1 weekend movie earning $19 million in September.

A corrupt businessman was not the only character Douglas portrayed on the big screen this year. In the cinematic surprise, Solitary Man, he stars as the charming yet disgraced car salesman and family man Ben Kalmen.

Yet, this year couldn’t just be punctuated by the two dynamic roles adding to Douglas’ library of oily characters. One of the most celebrated actors in Hollywood shocked the nation when he revealed on the “Late Show with David Letterman” in August that he has stage 4 throat cancer.

He’s embarked on a grueling eight weeks of radiation and chemotherapy, so a simple “How are you?” question is a “loaded one,” Douglas says, but rather cheerfully. With the cancer localized above the neck, doctors had told Douglas he has an 80 percent chance of full recovery. And at the time of our Haute Living interview, Douglas is in his 10th week of recovery and “everything is going well, and I am very hopeful and optimistic,” he says. His fighting spirit is a testament that his real-life character is as strong or even stronger than the ones he’s portrayed in the movies for 40-plus years.

After the last few years in lukewarm comedy roles (Ghost of Girlfriends Past, You, Me and Dupree, The In-Laws) and the typical action thrillers (Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, The Sentinel), Douglas validates he is as relevant as ever with Gordon Gekko part two, the fictional crooked insider trader who grown men and stockbrokers in three-piece, pinstriped suits have idolized for 23 years. And the Ben Kalmen character of Solitary Man is another loathsomely charming character that only the great actor can perfect.

“I’m 66 years old; the reality is that at this age, you produce and work on your own projects, but there are not many interesting things that come to you,” Douglas says. “So for me, I was very pleased when Steven Soderbergh first sent Solitary Man, which Brian Koppelman wrote, and it was beautifully written. There was no question about it. I said, ‘Let’s do this.’” Douglas was also pleased that director Oliver Stone could deliver a strong sequel to the critically acclaimed 1987 hit of Wall Street crookedness.

“You cherish that,” Douglas says. “You cherish those times when you get great material. And if just so happens that [the movies] come out in the same year, you only wish that your health will allow you to enjoy the experience as much as you did acting in them.”

Making Sleazy Charming

Douglas tops the chart of any Hollywood A-List today, but the actor had a relatively late start in show business. Though he is the son of actress Diana Douglas and actor Kirk Douglas (whose most famous role is the very chiseled, rebellious slave Spartacus), he had no interest in becoming an actor growing up. “I was a hippie,” Douglas explains. “I had no major. I went to the University of California Santa Barbara in the ‘60s; it was a great time. But by the third year of college, you had to declare a major, so I reluctantly took theater because both of my parents were actors. I had no real strong interest. But then I started doing it, and I had the desire to do it better and better. And I started working at it, and worked in theatres away from college. Then I was hooked.“

With a few stage credits to his name, Douglas scored leading roles in four forgettable movies. His first big break came at age 28 on the small screen, with a four-year run of the T.V. show The Streets of San Francisco. Douglas then left the show to produce One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), which won five Academy Awards and sealed his fate as a bone fide Hollywood man.

He had roles here and there but didn’t become a major movie star until Romancing the Stone in 1984 and in 1987 starring opposite of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. The same year Wall Street earned him the Oscar for Best Actor and his most famous scripted line: “Greed is good.” For the next two decades, Douglas expanded his resume, which included a detective role in Basic Instinct, business roles in A Perfect Murder and The Game, a sexually harassed computer executive in Disclosure, the president in The American President, a drug czar in Traffic, a novelist in Wonder Boys, and unstable dad in King of California. And if it’s a thriller, he is most likely your leading man.

Despite these roles, Douglas is known around Hollywood as a legit all-round nice guy. He is a faithful, loving husband to actress Catherine Zeta-Jones and uses his celebrity status to advocate for nuclear disarmament and small-arms control. Yet he possesses a certain swagger on the big screen, one that has often casted him as a sleazy something—whether it’s a corrupt businessman, womanizer, or bad father.

But Douglas isn’t too concerned that his roles are not the typical “movie star” leading characters. They are, in fact, usually the odd balls, the recluse, the morally inept. “You have to pick your spots,” he says. “You can’t worry about being on the bottom or not. You find your spot. If you’re lucky enough, you find the right piece of material, the elements to go along with it…You don’t try to keep up with the business. You find what you like to do, and when you do, you execute it as well as you can.” Indeed, the man has perfected the art of making sleazy charming. He is the most likeable villain in the movies—and one of the most dimensional. Douglas has his own list of favorite actors—Albert Finney, Viggo Mortensen, and Jack Nicholson—but we’re pretty sure he’s at the top of other actors’ lists, too.