Michael Douglas revealed at the recent TCM Classic Film Festival in New York City that director Oliver Stone originally disliked his performance in 1987’s Wall Street so much that he asked Douglas if he had taken drugs during production.
“Well, as we were finishing up the second week of filming, there was a knock on the door. ‘Hey Mike, it’s Oliver. Can I come in?'” Douglas recalled (via EW). “I say, ‘Yes, come in.'” He gets into the trailer and sits down. He says to me, “Are you okay?” I said, “Yes, it’s okay.”[He says]“Do you do drugs?” I said, “No, I don’t do drugs.” And he said, “Because you look like you’ve never acted in your life.”
Douglas told director Stone that he did not watch the movie dailies to check his performance. “Because I’m someone who’s always concerned about what’s wrong and what’s not in the movie… so I don’t pay attention to the daily papers. So I said, ‘I think you should take a look,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, that’s better.'”
“And I look at them seriously, critically, and they looked pretty good,” Douglas continued about when filming resumed. “So I keep saying, ‘I think it’s pretty good.'”
Stone ultimately agreed with his star, who played the iconic role of Gordon Gekko opposite Charlie Sheen and Daryl Hannah on Wall Street. The film centers on the relationship between a young stockbroker played by Sheen and a wealthy corporate raider played by Douglas.
“He was willing to let me hate his guts for the rest of the movie, just to give it that extra kick,” Douglas said of Stone’s initial insult, but he didn’t take it personally. “His record of success as an actor is very impressive, so I’m deeply, deeply grateful for the fact that it gave me the role and the fact that he pushed me to another level.”
Douglas won the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in “Wall Street.” He also won a Golden Globe Award and a National Board of Review Award for Best Actor. He returned in 2010 as Gordon Gekko in Stone’s sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
In Matt Zoller Seitz’s The Oliver Stone Experience, Stone said of Douglas: “I think he was more comfortable[playing the villain]but I think Michael struggles with his comfort level. He’s always looking. You know, he moves his shoulders a lot. When he’s exploited in movies sometimes, that cockiness of Gekko can be annoying and off-putting. But I like it when Michael does it in good movies and with good material. I really liked him on “Wall Street.” ”
