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Michael Douglas has a new memoir out this week.
And it contains some anecdotes that don’t exactly portray the screen legend in a positive light.
At one point in One Helluva Ride, the 82-year-old recalls getting into a heated confrontation with Julia Roberts at a Golden Globes party in 1990.
And considering Roberts was one of the biggest young stars in Hollywood at the time, Douglas probably should have thought twice before picking a fight.
According to Douglas, he was attending the party after being nominated for his work in Wall Street. He had also brought his then-13-year-old son, Cameron, as his date.
Roberts was there with her then-fiancé, Kiefer Sutherland. The pair were working with Douglas on Flatliners, the supernatural thriller that Douglas produced.
At one point during the party, Douglas spotted Roberts with her arm around Cameron.
“We were at the bar, and Julia had her arm around my son, kind of nuzzling him,” Douglas writes in the memoir. “To me, in that moment, he looked stunned… but I was pretty drunk.”
Douglas says he confronted Roberts and told her: “Take your hands off my son and take that Golden Globe and stick it where the sun don’t shine.”
Needless to say, this was not exactly the best way to handle a potentially uncomfortable situation.
The next morning, Douglas got a call from his producing partner, Rick Bieber, who apparently had some explaining to do.
“I’d crossed a line with the most in-demand young actress in Hollywood,” Douglas acknowledges.
Douglas quickly realized he had made a serious mistake. He sent Roberts flowers along with a note and later apologized to both Roberts and Sutherland in person at the Flatliners production office.
Fortunately, the apology was apparently enough to keep the movie from becoming a complete disaster.
“Luckily, they forgave me enough to get through that and finish the picture,” Douglas writes.
But there was a catch.
“I remained friends with Kiefer. Julia, not so much.”
Douglas is refreshingly candid about everything from his brief separation from Catherine Zeta-Jones to his substance abuse struggles in One Helluva Ride.
And he admits to years of heavy drinking and cocaine use.
Looking back decades later, it seems the actor has little trouble identifying that particular Golden Globes incident as one of the moments when his behavior got the better of him.
And while the apology may have saved Flatliners, it apparently wasn’t enough to restore his friendship with Roberts.
