By Clare Byrne, DPA /Cannes
Hollywood star Michael Douglas fought back tears yesterday as he thanked Steven Soderbergh for waiting for him to recover from cancer to cast him as flamboyant pianist Liberace in his latest film.
Behind the Candelabra, a Liberace biopic, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival yesterday.
Douglas, 68, plays the showman musician who died of Aids in 1987.
Matt Damon, who has starred in seven Soderbergh films, including the Ocean’s Trilogy, plays his much young lover, Scott Thorson.
At a press conference with the director and cast in Cannes, Douglas said the film was special to him, “because it was right after my cancer”.
“And this beautiful gift was handed to me and I’m eternally grateful to Steven and Jerry (Weintraub, producer) and everybody for waiting for me,” he said, his voice choking with emotion.
The star of Soderbergh’s 2000 war-on-drugs film Traffic, announced in 2010 that he was suffering from throat cancer. He underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
In Behind the Candelabra he wears sequin suits, fur coats that sweep the floor and a toupee to play Wladziu Valentino Liberace, the virtuoso pianist, who was the highest-paid entertainer in the world between the 1950s and 1970s.
The film is based on Thorson’s book about his secret five-year relationship with the performer, from which the title of the film is drawn.
Liberace, who was born in the US to a Polish mother and Italian father, kept his homosexuality secret in order to avoid alienating his mainly female fan base.
Damon’s character enters his life in 1977, as a quiet young man with long feathered hair, who is bowled over by the entertainer after seeing one of his shows.
The film shows Douglas and Damon kissing and sipping champagne together in a hot tub, as the pianist attempts to possess his lover, by showering him in gifts and affection.
As time passes, the megalomaniac musician, who stamps all his possessions with his monogram, tries to remake Thorson in his own likeness. He puts him on a diet and arranges for him to undergo plastic surgery.
As he loses his sense of self Thorson turns to drugs and Liberace to another, younger man.
The two split but meet again when Liberace is on his deathbed.
Douglas recalled meeting Wladziu Valentino Liberace, or Lee as he was known to his friends, when he was 12.
“Between the gold around his neck and his rings, the light was bouncing off of him. He had a great smile on him, not a hair out of his place, now I know why,” Douglas said, describing Liberace as a “forefather to Elton John and Lady Gaga”.
Soderbergh said he remembered his parents watching Liberace shows on television when he was a boy.
“I just remember being fascinated by how fascinated my parents were in watching him.”
He first suggested the role of Liberace to Douglas when they were making Traffic. Douglas joked that his first reaction was to feel “a little paranoid”.
The film is one of 20 competing for the Palme d’Or, the top prize at the Cannes festival, which Soderbergh won when he was only 26 with Sex, Lies and Videotape.
Soderbergh, who has since has gone on to make a string of blockbusters, from Traffic, which won him the Best Director Oscar, to Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen, had previously said the film would be his last.
Yesterday, however, he left the question open.
“I want a break. I can’t say if it’s my last film or not.”