Best known for films such as Wall Street, Basic Instinct and Romancing The Stone, Michael Douglas’ talk at the Red Sea International Film Festival proved to be a masterclass for young actors, as he delved into his personal life and career in Hollywood, spanning over six decades.

Starting at the beginning, from his childhood, he recalled how he resented acting, despite being the son of an actor-couple, Kirk and Diana Douglas.

“I resented acting in my early life as both of my parents were actors. I had no interest (in acting) and never did any acting until university.”

After his parents divorced when he was six, Douglas moved to New York with his mother and would only see his father after long intervals during vacations, as the latter was a busy actor. But later on, as a young man, he was inspired by his father’s many iconic roles and wanted to emulate him.

Michael Douglas’ talk at Red Sea Film Festival a masterclass for aspiring actors

Douglas studied acting in his third year of university in the early 1960s, thinking it would be easy. “But when I started it, I had a terrible, terrible stage fright. After I graduated I went to New York and started working in theatre, taking acting classes. There was an acting teacher who helped me stand in front of people.”

He spoke about how he started with the TV series, TheStreets of San Francisco, back in the 1970s. He suggested that young film actors do TV series if they get an opportunity to, because it’s the repetition which would help them in learning the craft. He said he did 26 episodes in the first season and it was a lot of work, that helped him producing movies later in life.

TheStreets of San Francisco helped him create his own identity, separate from his father. “The most difficult thing in acting is that you do something and somebody says, ‘That’s just like your father and you don’t wanna hear that as you are trying to create your identity’.”

For him, one of the highs in his career was the comedy, It Runs in the Family, where he worked alongside his parents and his son. He said he realised quite late in his career that he had not worked with his father and jumped at the script, which had roles for his father, his mother, himself and his son, which he said was a nice experience.

Speaking about how he ventured into production, Douglas said it was for the love of one particular project. “My father had a production company and one of the films he was producing was One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (based on Ken Kesey’s famous novel).”

His father first made a play based on the novel, which was not very successful, then he tried to make it into a movie in 1963, but it got shelved. Douglas recalled how he liked Kesey’s novel during his days at university.

“When I graduated, started my career and had some success, I heard somebody in my father’s office saying that they wanted to sell the project of the film, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, because they could not get it made. I offered to make the film and dad thought of giving me a break due to my enthusiasm.”

He was supposed to play the lead role, but he could not get it and it landed in Jack Nicholson’s lap, who also won an Academy Award for it. Douglas said the movie was turned down by everybody in Hollywood and showed him the reality of the film industry, but it still got nine Oscar nominations (winning five of them).

He drew an analogy between acting and lying, saying “somebody in my early career said that a camera can tell you are lying, but we all tell lies and that’s what acting is. Acting is lying. It’s trying to convince the audience that what you are saying is the truth. Once I have this understanding that all I am doing is lying, it gives me tremendous amount of freedom and much more enjoyment about my career.”

Douglas said he had recently celebrated his 80th birthday and had never taken break from his career, except when he had cancer and had to pause.

He stressed the importance of a script and the structure of the movie more than anything else, saying that it’s always “material, material and material” that helps one make a good movie, if you can put three acts together and raise a structure.

The veteran star was also presented with an honorary award at the Red Sea International Film Festival.

Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2024