Michael Douglas admitted he turned to drug smuggling in his youth after his father, Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas, cut him off.
The legendary actor and producer opened up about this period in his life during a Friday appearance on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher,” where he promoted his new memoir, “One Helluva Ride.”
“You and I share something in common about getting through college together,” Douglas quipped, prompting Maher to reply with, “We discovered … that when you buy pot in one place and sell it in a different place, the difference between those two amounts can be very good in living your life.”
“Especially between East Coast and West Coast,” Douglas added.
As Douglas went on, he explained how his father essentially cut him off at age 21, noting, “Dad wrote me a check for $10,000 and said, ‘Great son, you’re on your own.’”
Yet, as Douglas put it, he still had “a couple of years of tuition left in school,” so he had to find a way to pay his bills.
“One time I said, ‘Dad, you remember one Christmas you bought me two beautiful Italian soft leather suitcases? Well, I found out that each one of those suitcases could hold 22 kilos of marijuana,’” he recalled to Maher. “I would go back east to see my mom with the clothes on my back and two suitcases. This was called, ‘BD: Before Dogs.’”
However, Douglas clarified later on in the interview that he did work a number of normal jobs. Specifically, after Maher applauded Douglas for not relying on his famous father to pay his bills, the Oscar winner shared that he was the “Mobil Man of the Month” while working for a gas station in Connecticut.
Douglas also pushed back on the nepo baby label, wondering why Hollywood faced criticism when family businesses are common place.
“With this ‘nepo baby’ thing, doesn’t every single business, doesn’t a father or a mother want their son or daughter to go into the business?” he said. “They have a sign that says ‘so and so and sons,’ so why pick on show business?”
Watch a highlight from Douglas’ interview, which includes a tidbit about his family’s origins, above.
