On Friday night, Michael Douglas stopped by “Real Time with Bill Maher” to promote his massive memoir, “One Helluva Ride,” which chronicles the actor and producer’s rise through the Hollywood ranks, from winning the Best Picture Oscar for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” to winning the Best Actor Oscar for “Wall Street.”
The book also covered “sex, drugs and rock and roll,” as he told Maher, including how Douglas helped pay for college by smuggling marijuana across the country in fancy bags gifted to him by his actor-father Kirk Douglas.
“You and I share the commonality of going through college together,” Douglas said, to which Maher responded: “We understand that when you buy marijuana in one place and sell it in a different place, the difference between those two amounts can be very good for living your life.”
“Especially between the East Coast and the West Coast,” Douglas added. “When I turned 21, my dad wrote me a check for $10,000 and said, ‘Great, son, you’re on your own.’ And I said, ‘Dad, that’s great, but I have a few years of tuition left in school…’”
So Douglas took matters into his own hands. “I once said, ‘Dad, do you remember one Christmas when you bought me two beautiful Italian soft leather suitcases? I found out that each of those suitcases could hold 50 pounds of marijuana.’ I would go east to see my mother with the clothes and two suitcases on my back. It was called BD: Before the Dogs.
Later in their conversation, the HBO host encouraged Douglas to work regular jobs to earn money, even though his father was a wealthy actor; This includes working at a Mobil gas station in Connecticut when he was 20 and earning the title of “Mobile Man of the Month.” The topic led Douglas to address the “nepo baby” discourse, in which children of Hollywood actors are criticized for making a significant move in the industry.
“In this ‘nepo baby’ thing, every business, wouldn’t a father or mother want their son or daughter to go into it?” he asked defensively. “They have a sign that says, ‘So-and-so and his sons,’ so why would you choose show business?”