MICHAEL Douglas, survivor of some of Hollywood's steamiest love scenes, is gently admonishing the media for their prurient interest in how actors can, well, make it look so real. 'I am amazed - amazed - at the curiosity and fantasy people have about sex in films. It's so fascinating.
'I ask people, haven't you, or don't you know somebody who has ever faked acts during sex, or pretended during sex with a partner? . . . Why people find this so hard to understand is beyond me.' As it is, Douglas probably does it better than any other. He's faked it with Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, and now Demi Moore in Disclosure. And sitting in a Washington DC hotel suite, he seems pretty happy that at the age of 50, he can still make it work.
'It's a good scene,' he says. 'It shows what you can do without taking your clothes off. It shows how hot you can get.' It truly is the case that in the three-minute ballet of passion that kick-starts Disclosure - which opens in Hong Kong towards the end of the month - the Armani hardly gets shed. Indeed, TVB would barely have to cut a grope from it.
But that is not what makes this carefully choreographed love scene (it took two days to film) unique. What is different is the fact that for once in Hollywood, it's not the man who's on top.
Demi Moore's character, Meredith Johnson, has bought the wine, invited her colleague Tom Sanders (Douglas) up to her subtly-lit office, and barely asked him to show her pictures of his wife and kids before she's ripping off his tie.
The scene ends with a dishevelled Sanders buttoning up and running screaming for the door. The next morning, she has publicly accused him of sexual harassment, and he has no choice but to sue her back.
