Michael Douglas is feeling philosophical. "The timing sucks, but that's just the way it goes," he says. He is talking about the stage four throat cancer that he first revealed in August and for which he is in the middle of radio- and chemotherapy. Chatting about it, he is refreshingly unguarded.
"I've taken the kids down to the hospital and shown them the whole radiology thing so they understand it," he says. "They've watched me actually get zapped. But there's not a lot anyone can really do. Cancer is a whole world on its own. You just have to do the programme."
That programme has, he says, given him a 75-80% chance of recovery – and he looks surprisingly well; grey hair brushed back off his face, thinner than expected but energetic, with his usual charm, and engaging. "I've a lot to be grateful for – I am very blessed to have a family who couldn't be more supportive," he says.
His family, of course, includes two Hollywood heavyweights – his father, Kirk Douglas, and his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and their two children (Dylan, 10, and Carys, seven) from his second marriage to the British actor.
Douglas is 66, and having children in mid-life has had an enormous effect on him. "I'm not driven like I once was – these days I am consumed with being a father and with my responsibilities as a husband. I never anticipated starting a family at my age. I'm genuinely happy to let Catherine work, while I stay at home with the children. I cherish this time."
But, by his own admission, he hasn't always been so involved. His marriage to his first wife, Diandra, ended in 1995, and their son Cameron, 31, is serving a prison sentence for dealing cocaine and methamphetamine.
"During my first marriage, my career was the most important thing in my life," he says. "I clearly know I made mistakes. There were absences. My eldest son, Cameron, is in the middle of a very, very difficult and tragic time. Cameron has made a couple of big mistakes in his life. He's paid the price. On the other side of it, he's sober. The kids really miss him, and he misses them. I've taken them to visit. Now that my own priorities are entirely different, I'm always encouraging people to wait to have a family – get yourself sorted career-wise first as much as you can."
Douglas was born in 1944, the son of Kirk Douglas and Diana Dill, also an actor, from Bermuda. "My own parents divorced when I was six. I was raised with my brother Joel by our mother on the east coast, visiting my father in Los Angeles during holidays. When your parents are divorced, you don't know anything else, do you?
"Kirk's career was constant, overwhelming – the guy didn't stop. Back then they were doing five movies a year. My father did 90-plus films. He was Spartacus! I always admired his tenacity and stamina but he was intimidating to me as a child. Like a lot of actors, he was consumed with ambition and his career.
"He was also consumed with guilt because of the time he spent away from the family. It took him a long time to come to terms with it. Some people don't get over it. We all get on well now. There are not a lot of sons or daughters of actors who have made it. Hollywood is awash with failures.
"I was really blessed that my mother remarried a great, great guy [William Darrid]. Step-parents never get enough credit. You know, it's always the wicked stepmother or stepfather but the truth is, there are so many more step-parents who have assumed the responsibility of raising kids that are not theirs and I was really lucky."
Darrid died in 1992 but left Douglas with a lot to be thankful for: "He was my surrogate father from when I was 12 up until adulthood. Kirk would be the first one to acknowledge that. He was a great listener, which is a tough thing to find, and I got to watch a lovely marriage – so it reaffirmed and reassured me that marriages can work."
He and Zeta-Jones married in 2000 and celebrate their 10th anniversary in November, but he didn't expect to find such a meaningful relationship: "Catherine was a tremendous surprise in my life. After my divorce from Diandra, I was puttering along quite well as a single guy and couldn't believe how honest you could be with ladies as long as you didn't date two of them in the same town at the same time.
"Then I got struck down. I was just bowled over by Catherine. The first time I saw her I was watching The Mask of Zorro. I just sat forward and said, 'Who is that?' We met for the first time later that year at a film festival. I was smitten with her, no doubt. I wasn't quite the son-in-law her parents had envisioned! I do like to wind up Catherine's father and call him Pops."
Douglas didn't start out with the intention of going into the family business of acting. He was intent on creating his own identity away from his famous father. "I thought I could never be the actor Dad was, so I avoided it for a while. I just spent time being a hippy. Then I got cast in the TV series The Streets of San Francisco, which became a big hit in 1972."
Even after making it as a television actor, he didn't rush into film. Initially, he made his name as a producer after Kirk gave him the rights to the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The subsequent film won an Oscar in 1975, but gradually, with movies such as The China Syndrome and Romancing the Stone in the late 70s and early 80s, he became more of a presence on the big screen. Then came two major hits. "Wall Street and Fatal Attraction marked the turning point in my career. Winning the Oscar for Wall Street was meaningful for me as a second-generation kid, born with a silver spoon in his mouth. It really meant a lot. My father always jokes with me. A few years ago, he said: 'You know, Michael, if I'd known you were going to be so successful I'd have been much nicer to you.'"
"I should probably go to a therapist to find out why I love to play awful characters in impossible situations like Gordon Gekko or Ben Kalman in Solitary Man."
Solitary Man is his latest film, following on immediately after his return as Gekko in the Wall Street sequel, Money Never Sleeps. But he has had to ease back on the workload because of his illness. He laughs: "Not surprisingly my itinerary is not that busy at the moment. But, generally, I really don't do a lot of films unless the project is important to me – like A Solitary Man, a little film of which I'm so proud but which, unfortunately, because it's an independent, will hardly see the light of day."
In the film he plays a middle-aged man who has an affair with a woman 40 years his junior – it's hard not to draw comparisons with his marriage to Zeta-Jones. He pauses and gives a wry smile: "The age difference – I'm 66 and Catherine is 41 – has been irrelevant to us. I'm more aware that I'm going to be 75 when my son's 18 years old and my daughter's 16. The kids are 10 and seven now and they demand that you stay fit.
The couple have moved to New York after spending the last 10 years living in Bermuda. "The kids recently started new schools, which means having to make new friends. I like to get them up in the morning and get them ready for school. I make them breakfast, and we talk about their day. I like to know who their friends are. I can see the tightness of the bond we feel and the security they have. It is tremendous, unequivocal love with no judgment, and that is the best feeling in the world.
"Neither of us is overwhelmed with worry about which school or college they are going to be going to. We just want them to be good citizens of the planet. They're not spoiled or obnoxious. They're well-mannered, confident, pretty worldly. My son deals with dyslexia to a degree – it runs in the family and my brother has it. He goes to a special school. We're old-fashioned parents, they've got British nannies and we get nice compliments from people. Our children make us proud.
"The year before last was Catherine's 40th, my 65th [the couple share a birthday on 25 September]. In these tough economic times everybody was a little cautious but we don't throw that many parties, so we said, what the hell. We took over the rooftop of the St Regis Hotel in New York and decked it out. We had great food, 150 people and an awesome rock'n'roll band. We invited everybody, the police commissioner, Welsh relatives, New Yorkers, people in their 70s, people in their 20s, everyone danced. If you have a party where everybody knows each other it gets a little la-di-dah. This was a disparate bunch of people at the party who didn't really know each other. My stepmother, Anne, was there – she's close to 90 – and she said: 'Michael, I've been to a lot of parties, but that was the best I've ever been to.'"
Every summer, they take the children to see Zeta-Jones's parents in Wales. "We'll go briefly and see all the 'rellies', maybe there's a charity event back home that we'll do. Then the kids stay on and we get a chance to take off. It's one of those rare times – the kids are safe, our nanny gets a chance for a holiday – real Welsh normality! The grandparents have a very nice house up there, but they do normal stuff in Mumbles and it gives us a chance to do something romantic.
"Once we're through this [cancer], Catherine and I are talking about taking the kids out of school for a year and travelling around the world – Phuket and Vietnam; we'd love to take the family down to New Zealand and spend some time in South Africa. We're still trying to figure out what age you can get away with taking the kids away from their friends and not have them hate you for it.
"From now on I'm going to spend all my efforts on the people I'm closest to. When you're younger you are so self-involved, self-obsessed. As you get older, all of a sudden, you begin to appreciate relationships, be understanding about the foibles of life, more forgiving – and you've got more time for the kids. It makes for a much happier marriage and family environment."
by: Elaine Lipworth
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