Michael Woods, (born in Detroit in 1957), had a brief "Golden Age" running from 1985 through 1988 during which he seemed headed for the upper reaches in the acting profession. In 1985 came his cops-vs-mafia TV series, "Our Family Honor," followed...
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Michael Woods, (born in Detroit in 1957), had a brief "Golden Age" running from 1985 through 1988 during which he seemed headed for the upper reaches in the acting profession. In 1985 came his cops-vs-mafia TV series, "Our Family Honor," followed in 1986 by the Jaclyn Smith TV-movie: "Rage of Angels - The Story Continues." He continued working in 1987 with a TV series called "Private Eye" and a movie with Diane Lane titled "Lady Beware." Then, in 1988, he played Robert Mitchum's son in one of TV's biggest mini-series, "War and Remembrance." And after that ... Well, at age 31, his career stalled and the road to stardom got detoured into something close to obscurity. What happened? The "Private Eye" series, stylishly set in the 1950s, might have offered him his best chance of recognition but the network didn't seem to know what to do with it and it disappeared without a trace. (True, the concept had its faults but the potential for this series was definitely there.) At least Woods still has "Lady Beware" to his credit. It attracted only modest notice at the time of its release but since then it's acquired, if not a cult, at least a small circle of admirers drawn to it feminist outlook and its hard-to-categorize mood. Woods plays the villain in this movie, an obsessive stalker who focuses his unwanted attention on Diane Lane. In the movie's most memorable sequence, he breaks into her empty apartment, takes a bath, and then wanders about in nothing more than a towel looped around his waist. At one point he breaks into a dance and his illegal visit culminates when he spreads Lane's negligee on her bed and then, dropping the towel, prostrates himself on it in a bizarre sexual fantasy. One gets an oblique glance of his bare buttocks at this point but mostly the sequence concentrates on views of Woods' bare chest which is nicely thatched with a growth of black hair. Many people watching this sequence probably find themselves thinking: "I'd like to run barefoot through that hair."