Michael Douglas happy to play "crazy"

14/09/2007 00:03

By Cameron French

TORONTO (Reuters) - Michael Douglas is sounding much saner than the character he plays in his new film "King of California", but he says his turn as a manic-depressive absentee father hits a few familiar notes from his own life.

Douglas, who sports a ragged beard for a part that prompted wife Catherine Zeta-Jones to liken him to the Unabomber, has been picky about his roles since his 2000 marriage to Zeta-Jones and subsequent birth of two children.

But he laments the time not spent with his son from a previous marriage, when he was more focused on a career that included roles in such 1980s hits as "Wall Street" and "Fatal Attraction."

"My older son’s 28, and I was immersed in my career (when he was growing up), and probably didn’t spend nearly as much time as I should have," Douglas, 62, told Reuters on the sidelines of the Toronto International Film Festival.

But don’t take Douglas’s decision to star in "King" as an attempt to make peace with his past. Rather, Douglas is enjoying a lightened workload these days, and taking jobs that appeal to him and fit with his family schedule.

In the film, he plays Charlie, a single dad who emerges from a two-year stay at a mental health facility and returns home, where his 16-year-old daughter Miranda, played by Evan Rachel .....continued below

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Wood, has been forced to drop out of school and work at McDonald’s to make ends meet.

Rather than stabilizing his daughter’s life, Charlie initially seems more trouble than he’s worth as he tries to enlist her in his latest obsession, a search for ancient Spanish treasure that he believes is buried under a suburban Costco.

CRAZY, BUT WITH A LEGACY

Douglas said the appeal of the character was partly the chance to "play crazy", but that he appreciated Charlie’s wish to leave a legacy for himself and for his daughter.

"As he says ’I’m just trying to prove that I exist’, to leave some legacy on this planet," Douglas said.

"I think it has that strong Don Quixote "Man of La Mancha" metaphor, to dream the impossible dream, to convince that person closest to you that it is true."

The film is set in a suburban California overrun by housing developments and big box stores -- Charlie’s once rural house now sticks out like a sore thumb amid a gleaming new suburb -- and pokes playfully at the theme of unconstrained urban sprawl.

First-time director Mike Cahill said getting companies such as McDonald’s and Costco on board for the film was key, as using fictionalized franchises would have rung false.

"I would have stopped the whose process if I couldn’t have the real thing," he said in an interview.

"We live with Coca-Cola and Applebee’s and McDonald’s, and to deny that it’s part of the landscape would be pretty false."

He said Costco readily agreed without any conditions, but that McDonald’s asked that a couple of lines of dialogue be deleted from the original treatment, a concession Cahill said was worth the sacrifice.

The film will be released in some theatres on Friday.

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