Michael Douglas still has it in The Sentinel
Although his new thriller opens in the UK on 1st September, that's not the only thing Michael Douglas has got his eye on.
Stopping off in London this week to discuss his latest movie The Sentinel, Michael Douglas is in relaxed, affable spirits. The movie shaker may still be sporting Jack T Colton's swept back hair, but here is a mature family man who is clearly taking a much less energetic approach to his life at the moment. Work only seems to be part of it these days. In fact, it's been a few years since he's taken the onscreen lead in a movie and I wondered why.
With refreshing candour Douglas acknowledges that, "In 2003, after It Runs In the Family and The In-laws, which I thought was a funny picture but was a disaster because it was released badly, people thought it seemed like a good time to go away and hide."
Had he been waiting since then for something to grab his interest?
"Well there was something that engaged my interest sufficiently, which was a new wife and two kids!" he explains. Having been round the marriage block once before, it seems that Douglas is more focused on keeping things on track with Catherine Zeta-Jones:
"This is not a 9-5 profession and there's very few people I know who are able to juggle a career and a family equally. Something's got to give. I spent a good part of my early life working hard and priorities were clearly career first, families second. Things worked out pretty well work-wise, not so well marriage-wise first time around, which is the price you pay."
With his career long since established, this time Douglas is espousing different priorities, perhaps mindful of what he may have missed out on before. "Once you decide to start a family at my age it's something to really cherish and enjoy," he continues. "You get those first years with children which is something that you're never going to be able to get back. At the same time Catherine was working in the prime of her career so something was going to have to go."
Him, basically. Well, the acting, for a bit at least. But he's been keeping his hand in with several projects and his production company Further Films. "The reality is that fortunately I like my work. I really like making movies, producing and acting. So you look, and see what's around". At times he found more than the next movie, though. "It gets hard working through all the drafts and all the re-writes and then when you're hard at it your little girl Cerys [Douglas's three year old] says 'Daddy!' You find your mind wandering and looking over there."
Perhaps these parental duties are to blame for the unevenness and insubstantiality of The Sentinel that Furthur Films has produced. In it Douglas plays Pete Garrison, a White House special service agent nearing retirement who, while trying to hide his own secrets, gets framed as a potential presidential assassin. The role demanded a few action scenes from the 66 year old and his co-star, Kiefer Sutherland, something that's not getting any easier.
"It doesn't help that Kiefer was a 400 metre high school record holder and he takes no prisoners when it comes to running scenes. He takes off like a bat! So I found myself stopping to look for evidence along the way where I could!"
In preparation for their secret service characters, Douglas, Kiefer and third string Eva Longoria were trained by a couple of retired agents. For added spice, they used live ammunition in some of the training scenarios, something else that brought an element of competition into the cast. "With live ammunition you're going to really see where the bullets are going," explains Douglas. "So there's Kiefer. With 24, you know he's going to be fantastic, and I'll look OK because I've been doing this a long time. But Eva..." He pauses. "Here I am patronising her, this desperate housewife, making her stretch to play a secret service officer... The FBI agents got together with the secret service and they all confirmed that she shoots better than 90% of the police officers we have! It was scary."
Garrison is not a whiter than white hero and has flaws as a person. In The Sentinel this, amongst other things, can make it difficult for viewers to care about the man's predicament, but Douglas has said previously that he is "attracted to ambivalent characters". He briefly alludes to the personal and political context of his character choices:
"I do these grey character things because I've not seen a lot of heroes around. Thinking back to my dad's pictures, which were much more black and white, characters were good guys and there were bad guys. I see a reflection of that in US policies right now. That kind of John Wayne feeling."
Sadly The Sentinel is played too safely, too mainstream to broker such subtle political thinking. This might well be an effort to win back those at the box office he might feel he's lost since 'those' family films three years ago. Although no Tim Robbins, politics is something Douglas has not been backward in coming forward about in his time. These days he's keener to use his public platform to discuss his humanitarian work, which also accounts for some of his time away from the screen.
"I like working with the United Nations a lot. I've been fortunate enough to be a messenger of peace for a while, working in the disarmament area doing documentaries on Sierra Leone and other voice over things, which I enjoy. Next thing you know a couple of years go by." If this real-world role seems at odds to some of the gun-pulling characters he has played, Douglas is quick to make the distinction between fact and fiction by clarifying his take on both.
"I look fairly carefully at the roles," he said. "Guns are an integral part of movie-making. For a long time it's been the easiest way to create tension. You try not to do it gratuitously. I've had my fair share, but I've murdered people in movies in a lot of different ways." But outside of the film, he points out, "If a movie is a successful, it's successful in Canada, it's a success in the UK, or in Japan, but the handgun laws there are completely different and that's really the issue for people who separate movies from reality - the accessibility of handguns makes it an issue."
With this in mind Douglas has been taking notes from a recently successful film, "I've been impressed by An Inconvenient Truth and Al Gore and am interested in coming up with something that can be informative and entertaining in the area of disarmament." He added, "The speech/slideshow is something that excites me a lot."
Considering that his family is very much the centre of his life now, I asked if he ever wants to make a more family-orientated film, such as an animation.
"Desperately. Unfortunately my career is made up of movies my children cannot see and I'm reaching a point now when they know mummy acts, but what does daddy do?" However, he's still the business-savvy independent filmmaker. "I think the animation issue always bothers me. It's generally been a licence to steal as far as the studios and everyone are concerned. They don't treat it like an actual performance, either in salary or in the profit-sharing," he explains. "They get to do a likeness of you, they use your voice and they usually go after you when you've had just your first child or baby and say, wouldn't it be nice if you had a picture that your kids could see. It's a racket! I've been down on them for a long time. For the sake of my child I'd love to do it, but not for the sake of the studios."
He's currently orientating perhaps his most talked about new film around that family. Racing the Monsoon is an India-set adventure yarn that he's currently developing, with Zeta-Jones looking likely to take the female lead.
"Taking a movie is three to five months of your life so we said, yeah, wouldn't it be great to do this picture in India? Let's take the kids to India for half a year, with tutors, and really enjoy the country and the experience." So perhaps he is thinking of a little bit more work/life juggling after all.
"It's not fully developed", he asserts. "It's a project that's a take-off in the spirit of Romancing the Stone. Unlike Romancing the Stone I will not be playing the love interest. If Catherine chooses to do the role we will find a nice young hunk for her. I'll be the villain and I'll try and kill one of them," and he concludes mischievously, "I haven't decided which it will be."
Maybe they'll put it to a family vote.
