The performance Michael Douglas called his greatest ever: “Yeah, let’s go for it”
When your father is one of the greatest actors of all time, you’ve got one hell of a task on your hands. This is precisely the dilemma Michael Douglas faced growing up. His father, the legendary Kirk Douglas, cast quite the shadow, one that Michael had to get out of if he stood any chance of making it.
Thankfully, the son turned out to be just as talented as the father and carved his own path in the world of Hollywood.
It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for Mr Catherine Zeta-Jones, but over his long career, he has amassed a seriously impressive collection of iconic roles. The 1980s saw him play dashing explorer Jack T Colton in Romancing the Stone and unfaithful husband Dan Gallagher in Fatal Attraction. This was also the decade that delivered him a ‘Best Actor’ Oscar for his role as money-hungry businessman Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. Since then, he has been an embattled detective in Basic Instinct, a superhero scientist in Ant-Man, and Benjamin Franklin in Apple TV’s Franklin, amongst others.
There is one role that Douglas values above all others, however. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the veteran star was asked to name the eight greatest characters he’s ever played. Alongside some of the aforementioned parts, as well as his version of Liberace from Steven Soderbergh’s Behind the Candelabra, he was particularly complimentary of William Foster, the main focus of the 1993 movie Falling Down.
An ordinary man who works a boring job, Foster is brought to boiling point one day when his car is stuck in traffic on a hot day. Determined to get home to see his daughter on her birthday, Foster starts walking only to encounter various annoyances along the way. These obstacles, which range from a rude shop owner to a violent gangster, snap Foster’s fragile mental state, and he ends up going on a rampage.
“This one was all about the haircut,” Douglas said of Foster. “It came to life when the film’s hairdresser came up with that idea. It was something she was thinking about, and I said, ‘Yeah, let’s go for it’. And the shirt was a bit too tight, sort of bursting at the buttons a little bit, giving the impression that this guy was about to explode. It was edgy and humorous, and people were uncomfortable to laugh at it.”
There had been antiheroes in movies before, but Douglas and director Joel Schumacher took things to a whole new level here. Foster’s shortcomings were far more overt. Here was a man committing heinous acts of violence for no reason at all other than he’d had a bad day. Hardly much cause for sympathy. However, when you really study Foster’s character, you’ll find a man who’s been worn down by years of personal misfortune and societal injustice. This prefigures characters like Breaking Bad’s Walter White: ‘good’ people who are pushed into doing ‘bad’ things by the world around them.
The character of William Foster and Michael Douglas’ excellent performance have had a huge impact on pop culture. In the fan favourite episode ‘Homer’s Enemy’, The Simpsons present a character named Frank Grimes, a well-mannered hardworker, who also has a breakdown. Grimey (as he liked to be called) is based on Foster. The movie has also influenced music videos by Foo Fighters and Iron Maiden, the video game Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland, and countless other movies and TV shows.
