Michael Douglas Reveals Why He's Chosen To Take A Step Back From Acting

Michael Douglas has admitted he has “no real intention” to continue acting.

The two-time Oscar winner recently appeared at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival to promote a re-release of his movie One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, where Variety reported that he reflected on the more recent years of his life and career.

Having recovered from stage four throat cancer in the early 2010s, Michael told the audience: “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.”

The 80-year-old continued: “I have no real intentions of going back.

“I say I’m not retired because if something special came up, I’d go back, but otherwise, no.”

Michael did claim there is “one little independent movie” he’s still “trying to get a good script out of”, but aside from this one project, he is “happy to play the wife” to his wife of 25 years, Catherine Zeta-Jones, “in the spirit of maintaining a good marriage”.

Michael is best known for his work in movies like Romancing The Stone, Fatal Attraction, Basis Instinct and Wall Street, which earned him his second Academy Award (his first was as a producer on Best Picture recipient One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, in which he also starred).

In the last few years, he’s played Hank Pym in a string of Marvel movies (the most recent of which was 2023’s Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania), narrated the documentary America’s Burning and appeared in the title role of The Kominsky Method, for which he was nominated three times for the Best Actor In A Comedy Series award at the Emmys, and won a Golden Globe.

He does also still have one film in the pipeline, Looking Through Water, in which he will act alongside his son Cameron Douglas.