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Greed and sleaze are still good to Michael Douglas.
Two decades since the sympathetic sinners of Fatal Attraction, Black Rain, Wall Street and Basic Instinct, the two-time Oscar winner confesses to an enduring fondness for swindlers, womanizers and weasels.
"I enjoy the challenge of winning an audience over," says the 65-year-old. "I don't know a lot of heroes in my life or my world. Maybe it's a product of going back to the Vietnam war. I don't know good guys and bad guys. I know gray guys. I know the ambivalence of people who struggle to do the right thing. But there's a little larceny in all of us and I seem to be fascinated by that area."
The latest addition to his rogues gallery of morally compromised alpha males is Ben Kelman, the self-destructive centre of the black comedy Solitary Man, which premiered at this year's Toronto International Film Festival. Kelman is a former car dealer who, amid personal and professional ruin, still finds time to seduce young women, including the 18-year-old daughter (Imogen Poots) of his latest girlfriend (Mary Louise Parker). The Office's Jenna Fischer and Susan Sarandon co-star as Kelman's nearly estranged daughter and ex-wife, respectively. With Solitary Man hoping to land a distribution deal, Douglas is already in the midst of his next project: Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps for director Oliver Stone, in which he reprises corporate raider Gordon Gekko, post-recession. Of course that character's iconic mantra "Greed is good" foreshadowed the past decade's implosion hedge funds, corporate malfeasance and unchecked business practices.
"Twenty-two years later, the character still haunts me and a lot of other people," Douglas says. "The guy was a villain (but) if I get one more drunken investment banker coming up to me going, 'You're the man! You're why I got into Wall Street!' .... But (the sequel's) got a good script, Oliver's in good form. It's certainly a big responsibility. You know, 1986 and 1987 was a phenomenal rock-and-roll time, but the past couple years put the size of the first one to shame in terms of what's going on. It's appropriate."
Besides, he notes, he hasn't done every sequel that's been offered. Like Basic Instinct 2? "I was not going to go near that, man. My saggy ass just got through the first one."
These days there are few roles than ever -- sequelized or not -- strong enough to lure him "out of the house" away from life with wife Catherine Zeta-Jones and their two young children.
Family, he says, is his priority now, not his career -- a reversal from his first marriage to Diandra Douglas. In August, their 30-year-old son, Cameron, was charged with drug possession with the intent to distribute. Shortly after the arrest, Douglas said he was "devastated" by the situation -- which resulted in the kind of media scrutiny he and Zeta-Jones have mostly managed to avoid by living in Bermuda.
"We've been married for nine years and we're just back in New York this year. A lot of it was just an idyllic life of never having to worry about pictures coming up. You can enjoy your marriage; you can enjoy your children. I don't know how they do it in L.A.
"With the paparazzi, nobody can do anything anymore. Nobody can make a mistake. Michael Phelps smoking a bong at a party and there's some guy with a camera. You just can't do anything."
Of his relationship with Zeta-Jones, he continues, "It's always nice when you find somebody that you love. I did not anticipate having children again. That's been such a joy. But you know, for women, 40 is the new 30. For guys, 60's become 50 -- you can just carry on a lot longer, both for health reasons and because of Ciallus and any other product that might be out there now."