VETERAN actor is elated to join the Marvel world and make his first special effects flick. RUBEN V. NEPALES
LOS ANGELES—“We are doing great!” Michael Douglas exclaimed about his life with his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, since they reconciled in 2013. The actor, who battled throat cancer and is now completely healed from the disease, looked good, too, in our recent chat at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California.
“We are closer than ever,” Michael added about his marriage to Catherine that almost ended a few years ago. “If both parties want to try to work something out, they can. It’s always a problem when one of them wants to and the other doesn’t. We are fine.”
“Mutual love,” said Michael about what helped the couple save their union.
“The kids are doing great,” the proud dad gushed about Dylan, 14, and Carys, 12. The two looked all grown up when they made a rare appearance in an event honoring their father in Israel. Michael received the Genesis Prize, considered as the Jewish Nobel Prize. “They had a clear understanding of what was going on (when Michael and Catherine were having marriage problems). I don’t think there was a lot of secrets.”
“It’s just a joy having two young kids, he declared. “Carys is a very good dancer. Dylan is an actor and he also plays in a band. I certainly enjoy exercises with them. I appreciate having a good marriage and enjoy our time together.”
Asked if his dad, veteran actor Kirk Douglas, gave him advice during his marriage’s difficult times, Michael answered, “He stayed out of trying to give advice. He had general concern for both Catherine and myself. He didn’t have a whole lot to say other than wishing everybody to stay out of it (meddling in the marriage), which I think is the best advice.”
Michael offered his own take on his 98-year-old father’s 61-year marriage to Anne Buydens—a record in Hollywood. “First of all, happy wife, happy life,” Michael said, his eyes lighting up. “That’s one key ingredient. You learn to work as a team and to support each other. She has been wonderfully supportive of him. She is the president of his company. She has dealt with the financial issues in their life. They are a good team.
“It takes two to tango. My stepmother Anne is quite an extraordinary woman. I always say, I don’t think stepmothers ever get the proper credit. We always write them off as the mean, old stepmothers but in fact, out of their love for their spouses, they accept the children of other marriages.”
MICHAEL Douglas shares the screen with Paul Rudd (right) in “Ant-Man.”
Prison sentence
On Cameron (his son with ex-wife Diandra Luker), who’s serving a prison sentence for drug dealing, Michael said, “I just try to get him out. He’s gone way beyond the amount of time anybody should stay in jail for a nonviolent drug offense. He’s closing in on seven years now. He was sentenced a second time. He was a serious drug addict. There was no question about that. It was a big issue.
“But it was not until this year that he had any help on it. He had a minor drug offense in prison which was normally handled by him losing his commissary privileges or what not.
“He was given a very stiff sentence, the highest sentence anybody on record has ever had. They extended his sentence. My efforts are just to try to get him out. He is in good shape. I have stayed quiet on this issue until he is out of jail.
“It comes down to economics—they are realizing how expensive it is to keep these nonviolent drug offenders in jail. They are letting them out earlier. I wish my son got some of that benefit. He has had his fair share of downtime. It’s time for him to get out.”
As for his still-thriving film career, Michael is elated to be cast in a Marvel movie, “Ant-Man,” which stars Paul Rudd in the title role. “No one has asked me to be in these ones before,” he said with a grin. “I was a little jealous of my friends Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito, the Joker and the Penguin, respectively. I was very happy to have a chance to do this. Also, I had never been in a special effects movie. It was an opportunity to extend my little résumé.”
“I had a wonderful time in joining the Marvel world,” he said, then added with a laugh, “and drinking the Marvel Kool-Aid.”
He relished seeing the scenes where they show a younger version of his character, Dr. Hank Pym, a biochemist who creates a size-altering formula. “They put dots all over my face. Then they had the cuts where they had already done all the computer graphics and it was amazing. Immediately, I went, ‘Wait a minute, let’s do ‘Romancing the Stone’ again. This is great. Why not, let’s just go back there and make me young again.’
“It’s really eerie. I was always scared. Years ago, I remember thinking what is going to happen eventually. There will only be hologram actors who are going to be a mix of various film elements and they won’t even exist.”
He volunteered about his look in “Ant-Man” which called for facial hair: “Catherine hated the mustache and beard. She just didn’t like the way it looked and the way it felt. So she was happy when I shaved that off as quickly as possible.”
Survivor
He beamed as he talked about his health condition and career: “I feel great. Listen, I am a cancer survivor. For any and all of us who are cancer survivors, it’s good to be alive. So, life is good. I am in a career and an industry where even when you are 70 years old, they still want you. What’s not to like?”
Michael did appear good in this recent interview—he looked the way he did in his precancer days. He seemed livelier, too.
“I feel good and my energy is up,” he confirmed. “I am just happy. I am enjoying that someone wants me and I find a part once in a while.
“I have started being gluten-free. I lost a lot of weight in a good way. There is no medicine or anything.” Laughing, he quipped, “You just try to keep your jaw open (laughs).”
On the actors he admired when he was a kid, Michael chuckled and shared, “Whoa! Dad wouldn’t want to hear this but I was a big Burt Lancaster fan. Yeah, I liked Burt a lot, thinking of the different things he did. And Steve McQueen. Steve produced one of my earliest pictures that I ever did. I really idolized him. I thought he was the ultimate cool guy.
“I am thinking about Burt and his great line, ‘Kirk could be the first one to tell you how difficult he is to work with, and I would be the second.’”
Michael, who was raised on the East Coast, shared some of his memories when he visited his famous dad in Hollywood. He bumped into stars in the yard. “People would walk in the backyard and be by the pool, swimming. I would think, who is that? And go, ‘Hi, hello! Where did you come from?’ It was like that.”
At 70, the man is a budding hotel magnate. “I am building a hotel in Bermuda where my mother’s (Diana Dill) family is from,” he disclosed. “We started construction and hope to finish the hotel before the America’s Cup in Bermuda in 2017.”
This United Nations Messenger of Peace is also busy with his other commitments to social causes. “I have this work with the Genesis Prize Foundation which is taking up a fair amount of my time. I do my work in nuclear disarmament with the United Nations.”
For relaxation, Michael ventures out to the golf course. “I am an avid yet poor golfer, but I love golf. The days go pretty fast.”
Asked to name three films for which he’d like to be remembered, Michael obliged, “I would say ‘Falling Down’ might be one of them. I guess ‘Wall Street’ and I like ‘Wonder Boys’—that was a good one.
(E-mail the columnist at rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com. Follow him at https://twitter.com/nepalesruben.)