Oliver Stone hated Michael Douglas’ acting in Wall Street initially, so much so that he asked him if he was “doing drugs” during production.
Douglas portrayed a wealthy corporate raider, Gordon Gekko, in the 1987 US crime drama, which was directed and co-written by Stone.
- READ MORE: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps – review
During a recent appearance at the TCM Classic Film Festival in New York City, the retired acting legend, 81, recalled a run-in with Stone on set.
“OK, so we were finishing the second week of filming, and there was a knock on my door,” Douglas remembered (via Variety).
“‘Hey Mike, it’s Oliver. Can I come in?’ I say, ‘Yeah, come on in’. He comes in the trailer and sits down.”
He continued: “He says to me, ‘You OK?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m OK’. [Stone says], ‘Are you doing drugs?’ I said, ‘No, I’m not doing drugs’. And he said, ‘Because you look like you’ve never acted before in your life’.”
In response, Douglas told Stone that he hadn’t been watching the movie’s dailies to check on his performance. The actor reasoned that he was “one of those guys that always sees what’s wrong or what’s not going to be in the film, so I don’t pay attention to the dailies”.
He added: “So I said, ‘I guess I’d better take a look’, and [Stone] said, ‘Yeah, you better’.”
Douglas went on: “And then I’m looking at them really hard, and critically, and they seemed pretty good. So I keep saying, ‘I think it’s pretty good’.”
Eventually, Stone agreed with the actor, who appeared in Wall Street opposite Charlie Sheen and Daryl Hannah as Bud Fox and Darien Taylor, respectively.
“[Stone] was willing for me to hate his guts for the rest of this movie to get that extra little push,” Douglas said of the director’s insults, which he didn’t take personally.
“His record of successes with actors is quite impressive. So I’m deeply, deeply appreciative of the fact that it gave me part and the fact that he pushed me to another level.”
Douglas would go on to win the Best Actor award at the Oscars for his performance. He also won the Best Actor prize at both the Golden Globes and the National Board of Review Awards.
He reprised his role of Gordon Gekko in Stone’s 2010 sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
The original Wall Street focuses on the relationship between Sheen’s young stockbroker and Douglas’ wealthy corporate raider.
A synopsis reads (via IMDB): “An impatient young stockbroker is willing to do anything to get to the top, including trading on illegal inside information taken through a ruthless, greedy corporate raider who takes the youth under his wing.”
In Matt Zoller Seitz’s 2016 book The Oliver Stone Experience, Stone reflected on Douglas’ performance: “I think he was more comfortable [playing a villain], but I think Michael struggles for comfort levels. I mean, he’s not comfortable, per se; he’s always looking.
“If you notice, he moves his shoulders a lot. When he’s misused, which he sometimes is in films, that cockiness of Gekko can be irritating, smarmy, in the wrong roles. But I like Michael when he’s doing it in good movies, with good material. I liked him in Wall Street very much.”
Last summer, Michael Douglas said he had “no real intentions” of acting again. “I realised I had to stop,” he explained (via The Guardian). However, the actor said he could be tempted back to the screen “if something special came up”.
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