Michael Douglas ‘no real intentions' of going back to acting
The 80-year old actor and producer was speaking during a press conference at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic for the 50th anniversary of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, which he co-produced.
Advertisement
Douglas most recently starred as Benjamin Franklin in the Apple TV+ series Franklin in 2022 and said that unless something 'special' came along, it was time for him 'to stop'.
The actor, who is married to Welsh actress Catherine Zeta Jones, also spoke about how 'lucky' he was to have made a recovery from stage four cancer after undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatment and avoiding surgery that would have impacted his speech and removed parts of his jaw.
Michael Douglas said he was 'very happy taking the time off' (Doug Peters/PA)
He said: 'I've had a very busy career. I have not worked since 2022, purposefully, because I realised I had to stop. I had been working pretty hard for almost 60 years, and I did not want to be one of those people who dropped dead on the set.
'I'm very happy with taking the time off. I have no real intentions of going back.
Advertisement
'I say I'm not retired, because if something special came up, I'd go back, but otherwise, I'm quite happy. Just like to watch my wife work.'
Douglas co-produced the film adaptation to Ken Kesey's novel, which explores themes of power and resistance as a rebellious convict arrives at a psychiatric hospital in 1963 where he encourages his fellow patients to take control of their lives and defy the tyrannical head nurse.
Starring Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher, the film was nominated for nine Oscars and took home five including the 1975 award for best picture.
Michael Douglas is married to Welsh actress Catherine Zeta Jones (Ian West/PA)
When asked about the parallels between the film and current political environment in the US, Douglas said: 'I think our president's name has been mentioned enough in the short time that he's been president.
Advertisement
'And I look at it generally as the fact of how precious, how precious democracy is, how vulnerable it is, and how it always has to be protected, and we have to be reminded.
'Right now, our country is flirting with autocracy as some other democracies in this world.
'Democracy is not to be taken for granted, and I think it reminds us that we all need to make our efforts. It's not the job of somebody else.
'And of course, the disappointing thing is, politics now seem to be for profit.
Advertisement
'I myself am worried, I'm nervous, and I just think it's all of our responsibilities, not for somebody else to look out for us, but for us to each look out for ourselves.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Glasgow Times
20 minutes ago
- Glasgow Times
Glasgow made millions from filming of TV and movies
Shetland, the Buccaneers and US film, The Running Man, were among productions hosted in the city. The figures released in a council paper come as Glasgow's Bothwell Street is currently transformed into New York to film Spider-Man: Brand New Day. (Image: Filming for season two of The Buccaneers - an 1890s New York drama - took place in Glasgow) Explaining more about the film industry in the city, a council paper said: 'Glasgow hosted 140 productions in 2024 resulting in an estimated local expenditure of £33 million. Noted productions of scale included Shetland (S9), the second series of Apple TV's The Buccaneers, BBC's The Bombing of Pan Am 103, Sky's Lockerbie: A search for Truth and US feature film The Running Man.' It added: 'We will continue to work with our colleagues in NRS (the council's neighbourhoods, regeneration and sustainability department) to provide a free service to productions. 2025 brings three large scale studio features to the city for location filming and several UK TV series basing their production office and crewing up out of Glasgow.' Glasgow City Council has made a committment to 'ensure that the growth and success of Glasgow's film and [[TV]] industry contributes to the local economy with local business, training, and employment opportunities.' It is working on ongoing actions to to 'support film and TV production in the city' and 'promote sustainability within the screen sector in Glasgow.' The efforts form part of the council's mission to 'support the growth of an innovative, resilient and net zero carbon economy' under its 'Grand Challenge Two' policy to 'increase opportunity and prosperity for all our citizens' alongside a wide range of other work to try and improve people's lives. Details on the council's strategic plan performance relating to Grand Challenge 2 is to be presented at next week's operational performance and delivery scrutiny committee.
Telegraph
5 hours ago
- Telegraph
Peaky Blinders star Sam Claflin: ‘Jeremy Irons spoke to a dummy for four minutes thinking it was me'
The other day, a director started talking to Sam Claflin about the unexpected shape of his career. 'He said to me, 'What happened to you? You were going up and up in this direction, and then, suddenly,' Claflin stretches his arm out horizontally, ''you went over there.'' Claflin shrugs. 'I don't know if that swerve in direction damaged my career or not. But I needed to shake the tree.' For a long time it seemed (not least to Claflin himself) that he was barely in a film that didn't require him to take off his shirt. He was frequently bare-chested as the sword-wielding hunk Finnick Odair in The Hunger Games franchise. He whipped off his shirt as William in 2012's Snow White and the Huntsman. The first time it happened, during the fourth instalment of Pirates of the Caribbean, in 2011, in which he played the missionary Philip Swift, showing his abs wasn't even part of the script. 'They decided a week before filming that I was going to take my top off,' he says. 'I was like, what? I hadn't done any of that Hollywood thing, such as eating properly or going to the gym. Instead, I'd been drinking beer and eating like a student. So to be told you had to go shirtless, in your first Hollywood movie, with only a week to prepare, was slightly terrifying.' Moreover, still barely out of drama school – he graduated from Lamda in 2009 – he lacked the courage to resist. 'It happened at a time in my career when I was so young, I felt I couldn't say no. Call it imposter syndrome, but I was really afraid of being caught out, of people thinking I couldn't act. Of course I was saying, 'Yes sir, yes sir, whatever you need me to do.'' So, several years ago, Claflin, 39, decided to change tack. Realising that he was on a trajectory that on one level might easily result in blockbuster-level stardom, but which also might mean playing what he calls 'the same character over again but in different costumes', he set about going against type. He was up for the role of Miles Richards in The Riot Club, but politely persuaded the casting director to let him read for the more obnoxious character of Alistair Ryle, too – which he got. He successfully auditioned for the part of the murderous rapist Hawkins in the 2018 Australian thriller The Nightingale, despite the director telling him he wasn't quite right. 'Which only made me more determined to prove them wrong,' he says. He's portrayed Oswald Mosley in Peaky Blinders and Sherlock Holmes's malicious brother Mycroft in Enola Holmes. 'Before The Riot Club, I'd only ever played the good guy, the one who got the girl,' he says. 'I was very conscious of being pigeonholed. I knew I needed to take riskier roles. Who knows if it paid off?' According to the Golden Globes, it has – last year, he was nominated for his portrayal of the narcissistic rock-band frontman Billy in Amazon's adaptation of the hit novel Daisy Jones & the Six. And now he's back on screen in Bille August's TV adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo, in which he plays Alexandre Dumas's dreadfully damaged, magnificently unforgiving, 19th-century French avenger, who, after spending 14 years in a stone-walled island prison, having been framed by his fiancée's jealous cousin, is implacably focused on retribution. 'The hardest part was, once I'd escaped from prison, having to act like someone who was utterly dead inside,' says Claflin, who admits the most vindictive he gets in real life is becoming a little bit cross when someone cuts him up at the traffic lights. 'I'd have the scenes with my former fiancée, Mércèdes, who'd be crying [she marries the count's nemesis in his absence, unaware of what he has done], and, because of the sort of person I am, I'd instinctively want to hug her. But the point about Cristo is that his rage and hatred over what has happened to him is overpowering. So that was a challenge.' On one level, The Count of Monte Cristo plays to Claflin's natural appeal as an epic adventure hero, not least because August's production is exquisitely filmed and much of it has the photographic beauty of a magazine shoot. Yet the story's swaggering melodrama – it's a relentless tale of betrayal, fury and forgiveness, which sees the count adopt many masks in his pursuit of justice – also showcases his talent for combining a delicate emotional sensitivity with a more savage, muscular darkness. The show also stars Jeremy Irons as his benevolent cellmate, Abbé Faria: how did he find working with him? 'He's very vivacious, but also quite eccentric. At one point, the producers had a dummy of my body made for the scene in which I'm thrown off a cliff. During filming, Jeremy came across it and started talking to it, assuming it was me. For four whole minutes. Obviously, 'I' didn't say a word in response during that time, but he carried on regardless.' I've met Claflin in a central London hotel during a day of back-to-back interviews. He has a reputation for being terribly nice, and in person he emanates a lovely, shy sweetness, as though he still can't quite believe anyone would want to talk to him. He is nearly 40, but even now has an undeniable, chiselled boyishness. Yet for years he felt deeply insecure about his looks, his self-perception at odds with the way the film industry saw him. 'I was always really short until I was 18, so I never thought of myself in any way as a leading man,' he says. 'As a kid, I played Dodger in Oliver!, Zoltan Karpathy in My Fair Lady. I assumed I'd become a character actor. When I was cast in Pirates, I thought, 'What on earth am I doing here?'' It wasn't an entirely healthy feeling and soon Claflin was going to extremes to fit in. 'There is this Hollywood assumption that it's the men with the six packs who sell the movie. So there was a pressure that that was what I needed to look like. As a result, I developed a form of body dysmorphia. It wasn't quite an eating disorder, and I'm not blaming anyone but myself, but it was definitely because of the industry I'm in.' Does he think young male actors find it harder to protest against this sort of pressure than actresses, who have become much more vocal in recent years at the reductive roles many of them are expected to play? 'We're men and we are not allowed to talk about our feelings,' he says. 'But I've got much better. These days, I'm definitely not afraid of speaking about how I feel. And I also realised I didn't want a career in Hollywood. I wanted to come home and become a dad.' Claflin, who has two children under 10 with his ex-wife, the actress Laura Haddock, whom he married in 2013, grew up in Norwich. A keen footballer, he had no intention of becoming an actor until an injury forced him to find something else to do with his time – 'anything that didn't involve reading or writing, basically'. He fell in with a local drama club and loved it, but when he told his parents he wanted to become an actor, they were shocked. 'They thought that meant I was going to do musicals for the rest of my life. With my upbringing, acting as a career was unheard of. I went to a very rough school. Most people from where I come from become a mechanic or go into the army.' He won a place at Lamda, but his student grant didn't cover the costs of living in London. So he took part-time jobs within the college to make ends meet – working as a waiter at functions and hired by teachers at weekends to help with their gardens. 'My parents have always been wonderfully loving and supportive, but I've got three brothers and there was never any money. There's no way they could have afforded to send me. And there is no way I could have survived if the college hadn't helped.' Much has been written about the way in which drama schools are becoming increasingly prohibitive for working-class actors. 'The odds are against us, definitely,' says Claflin. 'That's not to say the whole industry is geared more towards middle- and upper-class people, but there are definitely more of those actors in the pool because they have more opportunities to be there in the first place. That's a systemic issue. I was bullied at my drama club because I spoke in a working-class accent. I adopted this posher accent to survive.' It must have been a bit exhausting, being inside the younger Claflin's head. Besieged by self-doubt, constantly worrying about his identity and how he came across. Today, he is self-assured and calm, thanks in no small part to undergoing therapy after the break-up of his marriage. He has a raft of projects coming out this year, including Harlan Coben's Lazarus, for Amazon Prime, in which he stars alongside Bill Nighy; and after years of feeling terribly homesick and unhappy in Los Angeles, is now settled in west London, close to Haddock, being a normal dad who happens to have a second life as a film star. 'When I was younger, I was so desperate to do a good job, I was overthinking it. I probably failed to have as much fun as I should have. But I'm nearly 40 now. I can now think, 'I've been doing this for 15 years. I only need to please myself.' And so the pressure is off.'
Daily Mirror
5 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Jason Momoa's co-star spills on 'unique bromance' on the set of his 10-year passion project
Chief of War has finally premiered on Apple TV+ after taking a decade to bring the epic historical series to the screen and it seems Jason Momoa has developed a close friendship with one of his co-stars Jason Momoa, the star of the new epic historical drama Chief of War, has struck up a close friendship with one of the show's emerging talents amidst the stunning Hawaiian backdrop. The much-awaited Apple TV+ series made its debut this Friday (1st August), a decade after Momoa first dreamt up the passion project. Set against the tumultuous life of the legendary warrior Ka'iana, Chief of War takes viewers back to the dawn of the 19th Century as Hawaii and the Pacific Islands grapple with Western intrusion and fierce internal conflicts. Te Kohe Tuhaka, a rising star from New Zealand, steps into the role of Namakeʻ, Ka'iana's brother and a key figure in the unification struggle that paved the way for Kamehameha I's (portrayed by Kaina Makua) rule over the Kingdom of Hawaii. In an interview with Express Online, Tuhaka praised the series as "brutal" and "beautiful", expressing his hope that it will inspire "indigenous superheroes" among young Hawaiians, reports the Express. He also opened up about the strong camaraderie he formed with Game of Thrones and Aquaman heavyweight Momoa, alongside fellow actors Makua, Siua Ikaleo (Nahiʻ), and Brandon Finn (Prince Kūpule), fostered through their on-screen portrayal as brothers-in-arms. Tuhaka fondly recalled, "These four hammers, I called them, we were all pretty close," adding, "One [memory] I probably can't tell you, but we did manage to have a good time. We trained together a lot, we were in the gym a lot together. There was lots of laughing." During the chilly filming conditions, Tuhaka admitted: "Because it was so cold [during filming], I struggled a lot to feel Hawaiian in the middle of winter, but those three men, I would just pull them into me and I'd go 'I just need to feel your warmth and understanding so I can feel Hawaiian again'. "The close-knit nature of the cast was very evident." Tuhaka praised Momoa as a "great leader" on set, highlighting his roles not only as the leading actor but also as an executive producer and co-writer alongside Thomas Pa'a Sibbett. "I have a real bromance with Jason," he confessed. "We're pretty tight. "And our friendship is pretty unique. But, I would say, as a craftsperson, as a producer, as a writer, as a director, he really went above and beyond to make sure one, we all felt safe and heard. "And second to that allowed us the space, time and energy to deliver the performances without, kind of, putting any restraints on us." Having appeared in films like The Dead Lands and Love and Monsters, Tuhaka's career is set to soar after working with a Hollywood heavyweight like Momoa. Momoa ensured Tuhaka had every chance to excel, especially during the many "firsts" experienced on set. "I have a background in doing my own stunts, and Jason has the same thing but his version of that is, like, 1000 times bigger," Tuhaka remarked. "So, to be taken aside by him to best understand the lines to run, the movement of the weapon, that guidance so the level of the stunts and the fights are matching... "We do have a few fights together where we're fighting as a duo. That, to me, was an eye-opening educational process as an actor. It was amazing." Keep your eyes peeled for a mix of bromance, romance, and thrilling action sequences as this enthralling historical drama gears up to drop new episodes weekly.
