Two-time Oscar winner Michael Douglas has an impressive resume as both a producer and actor. He reflected on a career that spans decades while attending the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in December 2024, where he admitted that looking back, he wonders if he would have enjoyed life a little more if he weren't juggling both roles.
In I976, Michael and his brother Peter took over their legendary dad, Kirk Douglas,' film production company, The Bryna Company, but he left in 1978 to produce exclusively through his own Bigstick Productions. His acting career would propel him to fame in 1984 when he produced and starred in Romancing the Stone (1984).
Reflecting, Douglas said at the film festival, “Careful what you wish for. I had a big production company. I financed my own movies,” per Far Out Magazine. “The producing aspect of my life sort of took over, and I would find myself in movies I was producing, and that is not a good combination.”
The dual roles were exhausting. Douglas recalled, “I would finish acting and then there would be a pile of crap, scripts that we were developing that I would then have to go through, making all my notes for them and all of that."
The pressure of running a production company while trying to act sometimes overshadowed his love for performing. "So, the job became overwhelming. There were about 20 years in there which I could have simplified and probably enjoyed life more," he explained.
Now, Douglas is in his retirement era. He has said he has no real intentions of acting again unless something truly special comes along. "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," he said at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival held in the Czech Republic in July.
He’s focused instead on his production company, Further Films, and loves supporting his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones. "If something special came up, I’d go back, but otherwise, I’m quite happy. I like to watch my wife work," he explained.
Michael is also supporting his children’s careers, just like his dad once did for him. His latest role was Looking Through Water, which starred his son, Cameron Douglas.
Growing up, Michael learned the ropes from his father, Kirk, who encouraged him to take risks and pursue challenging roles. Kirk famously gave Michael the rights to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which Michael produced into the 1975 film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Michael later earned his own Oscar for Best Actor for his role in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street (1987).