Michael Douglas was warned by Los Angeles police that a threat had been made to stab him with an HIV-infected needle at the 1992 Academy Awards, the actor writes in a forthcoming memoir first reported on by Page Six.
Douglas, who was a presenter at that year’s ceremony alongside Jodie Foster, describes being met at the door by an LAPD sergeant who told him there was a “credible threat” against him, according to the outlet. The officer’s message, as Douglas recounts it, was blunt: “We have information that someone will try to stab you with an HIV-infected needle tonight.”
The revelation is among the more startling episodes in the 500-page book, titled “One Helluva Ride,” which is set for release on Tuesday, October 6. Douglas, 82, won a best actor Oscar in 1988 for his role in Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street.”
A death sentence in the AIDS crisis
Douglas frames the threat in the context of the era, writing that being pricked with a contaminated needle in 1992 — at the height of the AIDS epidemic — would have been effectively fatal.
“This was during the height of the AIDS crisis, and getting stabbed with an infected needle would essentially be a death sentence,” he writes, per the outlet.
Security for the ceremony was quietly hardened in response. According to Douglas’s account, undercover agents were placed in the crowd, and as he walked out to present, he glanced into the audience to check that no one was rushing the stage. “All I could see were blinding lights,” he writes of the moment onstage with Foster.
A longtime friend of the actor told Page Six the account is accurate. The friend said Douglas was advised by law enforcement not to go out on stage at all, because investigators believed the person was inside the venue but did not know where — the individual could have been among the staff, the crew, or the audience.
“Michael was scared sh*tless,” the friend told the outlet. “It was a really ballsy move for him to go out there.”
No arrest was ever made in connection with the alleged plot, according to the reporting.
A second threat, three decades earlier
The Oscars incident is not the only death threat Douglas details in the memoir. While he was filming the crime drama “The Streets of San Francisco,” the actor reportedly found himself on a “kill list” attributed to the extremist group known as the Death Angels.
That group is credited with the racially motivated killings known as the “Zebra Murders,” which claimed at least 15 lives — and possibly as many as 75 — in the early 1970s. The attacks were carried out by four Black men who specifically targeted white victims.
Douglas describes wearing a bulletproof vest and working under the protection of undercover officers on set because of the threats.
Representatives for Douglas did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the memoir’s claims.
More than one kind of story
The threats are the most serious material in a book that also covers the standard fare of a Hollywood life. Douglas writes about drug use, affairs with high-profile celebrities, and other industry misadventures across the 500 pages.
The memoir arrives at a moment when Douglas remains a visible presence in entertainment, and its anecdotes — particularly the Oscars account — are likely to draw attention as they circulate. The alleged needle plot, unresolved by arrest, is one of those stories that had never been publicly told in detail until now.
Douglas has spoken before about his own health scares and his 2010 diagnosis with throat cancer, though he has said his illness was not related to HIV. The memoir’s AIDS-crisis anecdote adds a different kind of medical threat to the record — one delivered, as he describes it, not by illness but by a would-be attacker who was never caught.
Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/michael-douglas-reveals-deranged-death-sentence-plot-against-him-at-oscars