Val Kilmer is battling cancer — and “things don’t look good for him,” says actor and former co-star Michael Douglas.
He made the revelation while discussing their 1996 film “The Ghost in the Darkness” at a Q&A in London on Sunday, according to the Sun.
“Val was a wonderful guy who is dealing with exactly what I had, and things don’t look to good for him,” said Douglas, who battled tongue cancer in 2010.
There’s nowhere to hide in The Reach – even for the west coast Gordon Gekko, says the veteran actor
Henry Barnes
Thu 18 September 2014
Michael Douglas … ‘You’ve gotta be a hunk!’ Photograph: Richard Lautens/Getty Images
You star in The Reach. It’s a cat-and-mouse thriller with you as an evil businessman hunting Jeremy Irvine’s trail guide across the Mojave desert. Where does the story come from?
It comes from a book called Deathwatch by Robb White (1). He was a young-adult novelist. I wanted to do something for a younger audience. So here was an opportunity for me to be involved with this co-star that might attract a young adult audience.
The book was written in 1972. Was it tricky to adapt for 2014?
The desert doesn’t change. The hardest thing translating it as a thriller was to visualise it in hot sunlight. There’s not a lot of things to hide behind in the desert (2). You worry, well, can we sustain suspense for an hour and a half?
Your character’s a bad guy who wants to export American jobs to China. Is the movie trying to shore up traditional American values?
Yeah. There’s certainly that message going on. Patriotism isn’t the first thing that jumps out at you from my character. This was old-fashioned good guys and bad guys. I looked at Jeremy as a 19-year-old John Wayne. He represents the best of what America has to offer. I looked to the worst it has to offer.
Michael Douglas
Is it more fun to play the villain?
Oh yeah. Much more fun. You get to be bad. B-b-b-b-b-b-bad to the bone! (3) My father was the sensitive young man for seven pictures until The Champion (4). He played a prick and was nominated for an Oscar. Most everyone’s careers, their biggest successes have been through playing villains. Nice guys are more and more difficult to play in terms of getting the edges. I enjoy the challenge of winning an audience over. The audience hate you at the beginning of the picture, and by the end they’re going, “Welllllll. He’s not so bad.”
You’ve described this role as “the Gordon Gekko of the west coast”. Are all bad guys the same? Is the nature of evil universal?
No. There are subtleties. In this film, it’s more polarised (5), in the format of the original book. Young adults have good guys and bad guys, and it looks like the world’s come back around that way again: there are good guys and there are bad guys now.
Irvine spends most of the film topless. He went from playing a malnourished prisoner of war in The Railway Man to this. He was asked to put on 20lb of muscle …
We worked him over pretty good about it: “You’ve gotta be a hunk!”
Is there a double standard here? He had to buff up but it might be seen as sexist for a women to be asked to slim down. Should actors have to be eye candy?
It’s not acceptable for women to be eye candy?! If your role in that picture is to be eye candy and the director looks at you and says: “You’re going to be in your bra and panties and you’re looking pretty soft around the middle.” Absolutely you’d tell that person to kick ass. This guy is search and rescue. He’s a mountaineer. He’s in physical shape. Ignoring the fact that he happens to be a decent-looking guy, it would be wrong for him not to be in shape. If you wanted Seth Rogen running through the desert (6), that’s a different movie.
Foot notes
(1) White also colonised a tiny Atlantic island with his wife. They protected it from typhoons, an amorous Nazi ship captain and White’s mother-in law. He was a doer.
(2) Things Irvine hides behind in the desert: outcrops, hillocks, dunes, a delectably coiffed fringe.
(3) Douglas is rocking a villainous Van Dyke beard. It looks wicked.
(4) 1949 drama starring Kirk Douglas as a devious boxer.
(5) Key line for Douglas’s character: “Ah ha ha ha ha! Why won’t you die?!!
(6) We do. Kickstarter?
The Reach premiered at the Toronto film festival and is scheduled for release in 2015.
Who would have thought a movie about Liberace’s sex life would be boring? No, really; and please don’t pretend you have no interest in the subject. You might well have foregone the 242 pages of Behind the Candelabra: My Life with Liberace, the 1988 memoir by Scott Thorson, the pianist’s former lover, paid companion, onstage chauffeur, and eventual palimony plaintiff. But why wouldn’t you spend two hours with the HBO movie version, Behind the Candelabra, which stars Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, as Lee and Scott, and is directed by Steven Soderbergh? On paper, it promises to fulfill the famous Liberacean creed that “too much of a good thing is wonderful.” Moreover, 20 years ago this would have been a Fox movie-of-the-week starring Lee Majors and Ian Ziering, so you should not only be interested in the HBO film but grateful to it.
Soderbergh, of course, has considerable talents. Even his worst movies are swimming in great camerawork and editing. The first 40 minutes or so of the new one, which premieres this Sunday, May 26, provide that heightened, even giddy sense you get when a film is firing on all cylinders, when you realize the person steering actually knows what he or she is doing. Take an early scene in which Thorson is picked up in a bar by an older man, played by Scott Bakula, who will later introduce him to Liberace. The music, the clothes, the slightly dream-like cutting, Bakula’s porn-star mustache, the exchange of libidinous glances between the actors, their amusement at how easy both the attraction and the assignation are, were so evocative of a now distant era—the1970s—that I found myself smiling simply at the sheer rightness.
That pleasure only increased with the introduction of Liberace, first seen vamping onstage in Las Vegas for an audience of middle-aged squares. For a split second you might think Douglas is going for broad caricature—not unfairly; Liberace was himself a broad caricature in public—but behind not just the candelabra but the nasal, Paul Lynde drawl, Douglas’s Lee proves as vulnerable as he is vainglorious, as compassionate as he is monstrous, as conflicted as he is self-indulgent. In other words, he’s a recognizable human being, even if he’s dressed in sequined fur capes the size of mainsails, or, at home, in hideous embroidered caftans. His attraction to handsome, teenage Thorson is immediate; Thorson takes longer to warm up, but the film—with a screenplay by Richard LaGravenese (Water for Elephants, Beloved)—depicts their sexual chemistry as real and their relationship as genuine, loving, and tender, not simply transactional, although it’s that too. Both actors do some of their best work ever here, and viewers hoping for an all-shrieking, all-shoe-hurling backstage campfest akin to Mommy Dearest or Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (and I will admit I was one of those viewers) will be disappointed. But what you get in its place is so much better and richer, at least until it isn’t.
I would like to pause and pay tribute to Liberace, a ground-breaking figure in both show-business history and gay culture. He’s often dismissed as a mediocre pianist, wasting what talent he had on light classical pieces, polkas, and “Kitten on the Keys.” But give him credit for finding a way to be both out and closeted at the same time. He brought middle America one of its first tastes of camp, and his elaborate, gender-tweaking if not quite bending costumes are clear precursors to Elton John’s and David Bowie’s glam-era peacockery, and I’m pretty sure there’s a strand of Liberace’s DNA in Madonna and Lady Gaga as well.
And yet, while Liberace’s act reads as cartoonishly gay to contemporary audiences, he was a matinee idol for millions of straight women in the 1950s, when he had an afternoon TV show on ABC; there’s a wonderful clip in Behind the Candelabra of an actual 1950s song, “When Liberace Winks at Me,” sung from the point of view of a panting schoolgirl, with lyrics such as: “I start to shake./I start to shiver./Every fiber in being seems to quiver./It’s the feeling very close to ecstasy./That’s what happens when Liberace winks at me.” (A later verse has the singer feeling “like a royal queen,” so perhaps someone was in on the joke. See the original here.) Liberace never publicly acknowledged his sexuality, pretending to swoon over Sonja Henie for much of his life and successfully suing the Daily Mirror for slander, in 1956, after a columnist described him as a “quivering, giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love.” (Remember that phrase the next time someone insists that a nasty, celebrity-obsessed tabloid press is a new-ish malady.) Even after his death from AIDS in 1987, Liberace’s publicist denied that he’d had the disease—two years after Rock Hudson’s death had begun to shatter the taboo.
With so much going for it as history, as tragedy, as comedy, and considering the talent involved, why does Behind the Candelabra sag and grow dull? A few thoughts: Even viewers who don’t know the particulars of Lee and Scott’s breakup will sense where the film is heading. Lee, like most narcissists, is only interesting to a point and then becomes wearisome; Scott, alas, is never really that interesting—a nice guy, not smart, not dumb, who maybe wants to be a veterinarian or possibly a songwriter. The second half of the film devotes too much time to the couple’s squabbling, which is identical to the squabbling of couples in less rarified circumstances—about money, about work, about time commitments and jealousy, about the frequency and particulars of sex. One more thing: any film loses narrative tension when you find yourself vaguely rooting for one half of a couple to get out even as he’s slowly being dumped (Scott, if that’s not evident).
Twas the week before Christmas, and all round the globe, film writers were speculating about the 2014 Oscars. One of the most hotly-contested categories looks set to be best actor. Will it be Dern or Ejiofor? Redford or Hanks?
Catherine Shoard
Wednesday 18 December 2013 17.00 GMT
It could have all been so different. Had assorted studio heads, about three years ago, not made the call that Steven Soderbergh's Liberace biopic would prove "too gay" for them to finance, this year's best actor race would have a done deal.
As it was, Behind the Candelabra's HBO debut means the best Michael Douglas could get in the US was an Emmy. And, duly, a month or two ago, he did.
Behind the Candelabra is dazzling from every angle, with a supporting cast to kill for (most strikingly, Rob Lowe's vampiric plastic surgeon, sucking blood as he nips and tucks) and a script dripping with zingers.
Michael Douglas
Behind the Candelabra
But it's that central casting that clinches it: a turn that's simultaneously transformative - literally, Douglas as you've never seen him before - and a nice sly commentary on his star cache. The baggage he brings to the part is what elevates it beyond showboat or impersonation into inhabitation.
As reviews at the time noted, Douglas's Liberace is more Martian emperor than musician, gliding through his own personal Versailles like a voracious, upholstered pussycat. The arena of Soderbergh's story, too, is out of this world, almost sci-fi. Yet as well as being wild entertainment, Behind the Candelabra works as commentary on fandom and family, love and longing. It took an outlandish affair - between the sex addict closeted super-diva and an apple pie dog handler (Matt Damon's Scott Thorson) - and it made it relatable.
The film ends with Liberace's clear-eyed tribute to his lover:
Why do I love you? I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I'm with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for ignoring the possibilities of the fool in me, and for accepting the possibilities of the good in me. Why do I love you? I love you for closing your eyes to the discords in me, and for adding to the music in me by worshipful listening.
Soderbergh's film sings from the same hymn sheet. It treats its characters, no matter how ludicrous, with dignity and compassion. It loves them because and in spite of their raging absurdity, and doesn't have a problem with the conjunction. Beneath the sequins, behind the lights, it's just lovely.
Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones separate after 13 years of marriage
29 Aug 2013
The celebrity couple have endured a torrid time in recent years, with Michael battling cancer and his wife having bipolar disorder.
29 Aug 2013
Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones have separated after 13 years of marriage.
The Hollywood celebrity couple have endured a torrid time in recent years, with Douglas battling cancer and his wife having bipolar disorder.
Insiders claimed “the stress has taken a toll on their marriage”.
Speculation has raged for months that the pair – both winners of Oscars – were about to call it a day.
There was speculation last night that Douglas apparently saying in June that performing oral sex on women may have triggered his throat cancer put a strain on his marriage.
He’d said: “Without wanting to get too specific, this particular cancer is caused by HPV, which actually comes about from oral sex.”
Earlier a spokesman for Douglas said: “Michael and Catherine are taking some time apart to evaluate and work on their marriage.”
One source went further insisting the marriage had effectively ended – and did months ago.
The insider claimed: “It’s all over. It’s finished. There is no way back.”
A representative confirmed the couple are having troubles
Getty
Douglas, 68, is holidaying in Sardinia alone while Welsh-born actress Zeta-Jones, 43, is in New York with their children.
The couple have not been seen together since April 22 when they posed on the red carpet at the 40th Annual Chaplin Award Gala at Avery Fisher Hall in New York.
Reports say they haven’t consulted divorce lawyers yet nor made moves to make the separation legal.
One family friend said: “They both want the best for their kids, no matter what.”
Intriguingly the statement was released through Douglas’s long-time friend and agent Allen Burry rather than Zeta-Jones’s PR team, appearing to corroborate a report last week that Douglas was calling the shots.
An insider had said: “Catherine is fighting to save the marriage but he’s had it.”
Douglas was pictured last week arriving by private jet on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia.
The actor was spotted playing golf on his own, which he usually does with Zeta-Jones.
The couple reportedly decided to spend time alone once Douglas had returned from this year’s Cannes Film Festival in France.
When both are in the States, Douglas is said to be living in Manhattan while his wife stays at their £2million home in New York State with kids Dylan, 13, and Carys, 10.
She recently insisted it was business as usual, insisting: “Michael’s doing a movie on the East Coast with Diane Keaton, so he’s working.
"My children are actually at sleep-away camp, so I’m missing them desperately.”
Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones in happier times
When Zeta-Jones, who won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award in 2002 for her role in Chicago, was asked about the secret to their long-lasting marriage, she replied: “Respect, space and a sense of humour.
"We spend a hell of a lot of time together so we are careful to maintain our space.
“We recently had an extension built to house a closet. I go in there and never come out.
"My husband knocks on the door and says, ‘Can I come in?’
"But I’ve got a TV in there, and my daughter brings her friends in – they play shop, put on all my stuff. I could be in there for the whole day happily.”
Yet despite the denials, there has still been the speculation.
In February, it was reported by a US magazine that the pair were to separate in a “hush hush” divorce.
Both denied the claim. Now it seems the marriage has “buckled” under various pressures.
Douglas fought a cancer battle in 2010 as his actor son Cameron, 34, was jailed for drugs.
Zeta-Jones revealed in 2011 – the year she received a CBE – she was struggling with bipolar II disorder, a depression condition.
When Douglas, who won the Best Actor Oscar for playing Gordon Gekko in 1987 hit Wall Street, divorced his first wife Diandra in 2000 after 23 years, she was awarded around £30million.