Michael Douglas has revealed he once threatened Julia Roberts with her own Golden Globe trophy while drunk at an awards party.
Douglas, 82, recounts the clash in his new memoir “One Helluva Ride,” which hit shelves Tuesday. The incident unfolded during a Golden Globes party while Roberts, then in her early twenties, was shooting the 1990 horror film “Flatliners.” Douglas was producing the picture, which also starred Roberts’ then-fiancé Kiefer Sutherland.
The “Wall Street” actor had brought his son Cameron, then 13, as his date for the evening. In the book, Douglas describes seeing Roberts with her arm around the teenager at the bar. “To me, in that moment, he looked stunned…but I was pretty drunk,” he writes.
The confrontation escalated quickly. Douglas recalls telling Roberts directly: “Take your hands off my son and take that Golden Globe and stick it where the sun don’t shine.”
The fallout came fast. The next morning, Douglas fielded a call from his producing partner, who had already heard about the blowup. “I’d crossed a line with the most in-demand young actress in Hollywood,” the Oscar winner acknowledges in the memoir.
Damage control followed. Douglas sent Roberts a bouquet of roses with an apologetic note, then made amends in person to both her and Sutherland. The peace offering worked well enough to keep production moving. “Luckily, they forgave me enough to get through that and finish the picture,” he writes. The professional repair had its limits, though: “I remained friends with Kiefer. Julia, not so much.”
The memoir doesn’t specify which Golden Globes ceremony hosted the altercation, but “Flatliners” filmed in 1989 ahead of its August 1990 release. Roberts had won her first Golden Globe for “Steel Magnolias” at the January 1990 ceremony, making that the likely setting for the clash.
Douglas traces his substance struggles to this period. A couple of years after the Roberts incident, he entered rehab for alcohol and drug abuse.
The autobiography dishes on other chapters of his Hollywood life, including an affair with co-star Kathleen Turner during the making of “Romancing the Stone.” Douglas writes that their connection deepened during grueling location shoots. “We found each other first as friends, then as co-stars and finally as lovers,” he recalls. “Following an exhausting day of shooting in the jungle … I would sneak into her hotel room after everybody was asleep.” The fling ended when Douglas’ then-wife Diana Luker and young Cameron visited the set, prompting Luker to confront Turner directly.
Roberts’ representatives did not respond to requests for comment on Douglas’ account.
“One Helluva Ride” arrives in bookstores this week from publisher Flatiron Books.