Hollywood legend Michael Douglas reveals toughest thing about acting at age 74

Michael Douglas turns 75 in ­September but, if he has ­inherited his 102-year-old father Kirk’s longevity genes, he is still some way off his twilight years.

Although the Hollywood star, who won a Golden Globe last month for playing an ageing actor in The Kominsky Method, merrily admits failing health and advancing years go hand in hand.

He says: “Someone said to me, ‘Let’s play a game. I am going to give you the names of some pharmaceutical drugs and you tell me what they are for.’ It was kind of scary how many I knew.”

But getting older has made him take stock of what is really important in life.

He says: “The upside of ageing is that you choose how you spend your time much more carefully.

“Rather than just going with the flow you wake up in the morning and you think about what you are going to do that week and how you are going to spend your time.”

Married to Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, 49, since 2000, they have two children, Carys, 15, and Dylan, 18.

Michael says: “The kids and Catherine always tease me because I am planning holidays three and six months ahead.

“There’s much more planning your time because all of a sudden, you don’t have this infinite amount of time. Your time is finite now.”

In November, he was celebrating having a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, six away from his dad Kirk’s.

He says: “I didn’t expect to feel such emotion at the ceremony. Catherine was excited and happy. I was happy to have Kirk sitting there.”

And it made him think of the huge body of work they have between them.

He says: “Dad and I cover about 120 years and about 130 films between us.”

After starting in TV before movies, he is embracing the small screen again in The Kominsky Method, a Netflix hit.

The two-time Oscar winner does admit encountering some problems working as an actor at his age.

Michael says: “Memory is tough. Memorising lines takes longer and I don’t like that anxious feeling that you don’t have it locked in.”

But he says: “Hey, I am 74 and in most jobs they kick you out at 65. So I love what I am doing and it keeps me going. I can only play so much golf.”

With Kirk still by his side, Michael is also looking forward to seeing Dylan and Carys following him into showbiz, along with Cameron, his 40-year-old son by first wife, Diandra.

He says: “My three kids, Cameron, Dylan and Carys, all want to be actors, as well as my niece Kelsey.

“So there are four Douglases in this next generation. So I think this sense of immortality and the continuity of ­generations going on is kind of special.”

Cameron was released from jail in 2016 having served almost seven years for drug offences. Now he works as a DJ, and Michael recently became a grandad when Cameron’s girlfriend Viviane gave birth to a daughter, Lua.

Michael says: “Cameron has had a difficult time and has had his share of adversities but he’s doing great now.”

Meanwhile, Dylan and Carys have so far failed to put a foot wrong.

He says, proudly: “Dylan and Carys have been great students. Dylan is off to college now and Carys has a big career ahead of her. She’s a wonderful singer, plays the piano and is very pretty.

“I think you might be hearing from her sooner than you expected. I had to laugh the other day when she called – this is how sweet she is – and wanted to make sure it was okay to go on a date after school with a guy who is 17 and has a car.

“I said it was okay and she said, ‘I will catch the six o’clock bus home.’ That’s not bad. School gets out at 3.30 and she’s going to get the six o’clock bus home? God bless her. That’s how good she is.”

Michael was 16 when he got his first job in movies, as a gofer on the set of his father’s epic 1960 hit, Spartacus.

In the 1970s, Michael won three Emmy nominations for The Streets of San ­Francisco, the police drama he starred in with Karl Malden. It made him famous but kept him out of movies for years because of snobbery about TV.

He says: “Because TV had commercials the feeling was, ‘Oh, people can watch you for free, where they have to pay to watch you in movies.

“After The Streets of San Francisco it was difficult for me to get into movies. I produced many movies but I was not approved to act in them.”

Contacts helped. His first movie, Adam At 6am, was produced by Steve McQueen. Michael got to keep the orange Porsche he drove in it. He says it was “worth more than my paycheck for the whole movie”.

Finally, in 1984, his role as producer and star of Romancing the Stone, which won him a Golden Globe, landed him firmly in Hollywood.

Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction and Wall Street followed, all huge hits.

Michael admits there were pluses to having a famous actor as a father.

He says: “The biggest advantage of being second generation is that when you start your own acting career you have grown up seeing your dad with Tony Curtis, Frank Sinatra and Gregory Peck at home, and you have seen their insecurities and what they worry about.

"You see them as real people and it helps you to have a better understanding about
the business.”

But being part of that acting dynasty also took its toll. Before he married Catherine, Michael’s reputation with women and alcohol was the talk of Hollywood.

In the early 1990s he entered rehab for what was reportedly “sex ­addiction” but which he has always maintained was an alcohol problem.

He and first wife Diandra split in 1997 after 20 years of marriage. Then in 2004, his half-brother Eric, who was Kirk’s son from his marriage to Anne Buydens, died aged just 46 after ­struggling for years with drug and alcohol abuse.

When Cameron was facing jail, Michael wrote a letter to the court blaming “genes, family and peer pressure” for his son’s problems.

He has also had his own health issues to cope with.

In 2010 he was diagnosed with tongue cancer, which he blamed on oral sex. He later said he regretted any embarrassment it caused Catherine.

The pair split in August 2013, but quickly reconciled.

Surviving cancer was another milestone. He says: “It feels like a rebirth after you go through cancer and come out of it. You see priorities differently.

“You have a much deeper appreciation of marriage, of your children – you see everything a little bit clearer, and a little brighter.”

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