Michael Douglas: Baddies are best

OHMYGOSSIP — Michael Douglas looks to his actor father Kirk for inspiration when it comes to choosing roles. The 69-year-old actor has embodied a number of roles since his career began several decades ago, from Gordon Gekko in Wall Street to Detective Nick Curran in thriller Basic Instinct.

His current role is as baddie businessman Madec in upcoming movie The Reach, and it’s this type of character Michael enjoys portraying the most.

“Oh yeah. [It’s] much more fun [to play a villain]. You get to be bad. B-b-b-b-b-b-bad to the bone! My father [Kirk Douglas] was the sensitive young man for seven pictures until The Champion. He played a p***k and was nominated for an Oscar,” Michael told British newspaper The Guardian.

“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.'”

The film is based on the book Deathwatch by Robb White. Despite it being written in 1972, Michael didn’t see the change in era as a struggle, but it was a slight challenge to bring the story to life.

It follows Madec as he hunts for his guide, college student Ben (Jeremy Irvine), across the Mojave desert after the trek leader refuses to help cover up the businessman shooting someone.

“The desert doesn’t change. The hardest thing translating it as a thriller was to visualise it in hot sunlight,” Michael explained. “There’s not a lot of things to hide behind in the desert. You worry, well, can we sustain suspense for an hour and a half?”