Nearly 40 years after Fatal Attraction made audiences afraid to boil a pot of water, Michael Douglas and Glenn Close sat side by side again, and it took Douglas about a minute to reopen one of the most talked-about Oscar races of the 1980s. The two co-stars appeared together on The Graham Norton Show on October 30, and when the conversation turned to the 1988 Academy Awards, Douglas, now 82, did not hedge.
“She should have won with Fatal Attraction,” he said of Close, according to Page Six. The woman who did win that night was Cher, for Moonstruck. What Douglas said next got the studio audience laughing, and it got a response from Cher’s own camp within days.
What Did Michael Douglas Say About Cher’s Oscar?
Douglas laid out the history first. “She was nominated, I believe, [for] her fourth [time for] Fatal Attraction. Cher won that year,” he said. Norton checked the film, asking, “Was that for Moonstruck?” and Douglas answered, “I know. That’s what we all said.” Norton then added a joke of his own: “But Cher put some gray in her hair, so there you go.” Fellow guest Naomi Ackie could not contain herself. “The shade! The shade, mate!” she said.
It is easy to forget how stacked that year was. At the 60th Academy Awards on April 11, 1988, Cher, now 80, beat Close, Holly Hunter for Broadcast News, Sally Kirkland for Anna and Meryl Streep for Ironweed. Moonstruck swept the women’s acting categories that night, with Olympia Dukakis taking Best Supporting Actress as Cher’s tough, wise mother. Douglas did not go home empty-handed either. He won Best Actor that same evening for playing Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, which makes his memory of who should have joined him at the winners’ party all the more pointed.
His praise for Close did not stop at the Oscar. According to OK! Magazine, he said she “probably gave the greatest performance of all time.” That is a big claim, and it is even more striking once you know how close Close came to never getting the part at all.
Why Didn’t Anyone Think Glenn Close Was Right For Fatal Attraction?
In 1987, Close was known for warm, steady women. Her first three Oscar nominations came for The World According to Garp, The Big Chill and The Natural, where she played the kind and patient Iris opposite Robert Redford. Nobody had seen her as Alex Forrest, the editor who refuses to be ignored after a weekend affair with a married lawyer.
Douglas admitted on the show that the filmmakers had their doubts. “Everybody thought that Glenn was not right for the part, and so we moved on,” he said, as quoted by OK! Then he corrected the record with a laugh. “We have never been so wrong in our lives,” he said. “She was in total command.”
Audiences agreed. Fatal Attraction became one of the biggest hits of 1987, and Close’s performance was so convincing that she was recognized in public while still wearing the character’s blood-stained costume, a story she told years later. The role brought her that fourth nomination. It did not bring her the statue, and in the years since, the losses kept adding up.
The film itself went home empty-handed too. Fatal Attraction earned six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director for Adrian Lyne and Best Supporting Actress for Anne Archer as the wife Alex terrorizes, and it won none of them. Close has said, as Far Out Magazine recounted, that she fought the reshot ending that test audiences demanded, in which Alex is killed in the bathtub, because she believed the character was a wounded woman and not a movie monster. She lost that argument as well, and she played the new ending anyway, which may be part of why Douglas still talks about her work with such respect.
How Did Cher Respond, And What Happens Next For Glenn Close?
Close, now 79, has been nominated for eight Academy Awards in her career and has never won a competitive one. That is about to change in its own way. In June, the Academy announced that she will receive an honorary Oscar at its 17th Governors Awards on Sunday, November 15, at the Ray Dolby Ballroom in Hollywood, as reported by the Associated Press. She will be honored alongside director Ridley Scott and Disney animator Floyd Norman.
Close joked that Academy members “probably don’t want to feel guilty anymore.” It was the kind of line that only works because she has been so gracious about all those losses for so long.
As for Cher, nobody should expect a feud. When Page Six reached out after the episode aired, her representative kept it short and kind. “Cher adores Michael Douglas,” the rep said. That seems about right for two stars who shared one of the most memorable Oscar nights of the decade, one of them holding a statue for Moonstruck and the other holding one for Wall Street. In less than two weeks, Glenn Close finally gets to hold one of her own.
