Michael Douglas tells Bill Maher he paid for college by smuggling marijuana
Michael Douglas says he helped pay for college by smuggling marijuana across America in suitcases gifted to him by his father, Kirk Douglas.
The 82-year-old actor shared the story on “Real Time with Bill Maher” while promoting his memoir “One Helluva Ride,” according to Variety. The interview, reported on 9 October 2026, mixed college-era confessions with a defence of his Hollywood family background.
Douglas said the luggage came from his father. It was two Italian soft leather suitcases, the kind built for long journeys. Each case, he told host Bill Maher, could hold 22 kilos of marijuana. He said he travelled east to visit his mother with the cases full, during a stretch he called “BD: Before Dogs.”
He tied the scheme to being cut off financially. When he turned 21, Kirk Douglas wrote him a US$10,000 cheque and told him he was on his own. Support stopped there. At 20, Douglas said, he had already taken a job at a Mobil petrol station in Connecticut. He worked the forecourt and earned the title “Mobil Man of the Month.”
Maher then turned to the “nepo baby” label. The phrase is used for children of famous parents who are seen as getting a head start in entertainment. Douglas rejected the idea that actors should be singled out. He said parents in every business want their children to join them, and show business is no different.
The tales come from a book that almost missed its moment. Legal concerns about the frank depiction of sex and drug use in “One Helluva Ride” nearly held up publication, according to TheWrap. The memoir does not stick to Douglas’s youth. It also addresses a regret involving another star. Douglas writes that he “crossed a line” with Julia Roberts in an interaction that ended a potential friendship, according to The Daily Beast.
What makes this stand out is the contrast between the source of the suitcases and the use Douglas described. A gift from one of Hollywood’s most famous fathers became, on his telling, college luggage with a secret load. The exchange gave viewers a very different picture of his student years.
