Douglas decides to take it easy

Michael Douglas … and a surprise Crystal Globe award for is contribution to film and the festival Photo: Film Servis Karlovy Vary

After a lifetime of making more than 60 movies and a battle with stage four cancer Michael Douglas feels he has earned the right to take it easy and stay home while his wife Catherine Zeta-Jones, 25 years his junior, goes out to work.

Talking at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival after a packed screening of a restored copy of the classic One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest which he helped to produce with Saul Zaentz, Doug,las who turns 81 in September, admitted that his throat cancer “had not been a holiday”.

He added: “I went through the programme involving chemo and radiation. And I was fortunate. I had a couple of friends at the same time who were not so lucky, including the Dallas actor Larry Hagman who had the same cancer as I had. I was fortunate with my medical attention and was lucky to continue working. We were able to handle it with the radiation therapy otherwise the surgery would have affected my ability to talk and that would have been limiting.

Michael Douglas: 'I have worked for almost 60 years and I did not want to drop dead on the set' Photo: Richard Mowe

“I have not been working since 2022 because I realised I had to stop. I have worked for almost 60 years and I did not want to drop dead on the set. I am very happy to have this time off and I have no intention of going back but I don’t say I have retired because if something special came up I might go back. Otherwise I am happy for Catherine to go to work - and she is very busy.”

The visit to the the festival proved an emotional occasion with Czech director Miloš Forman’s family joining the audience as well as Paul Zaentz, a producer and nephew of Saul who has been instrumental in the film’s re-release.

Douglas recalled: “The festival was just beginning when we first came here. It was a new festival and Miloš felt it was important to his country to be at the festival. I remember we had a good time, it’s a charming town. It’s highly unusual to be supporting and honouring a movie from 50 years ago. It was a reminder for me of how special that picture was. It’s a treat to come back here to the scene of the crime, where Miloš was brought up, with all of what he accomplished.”

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest which was based on Ken Kesey’s first novel, has been the subject of many remake offers over the years. Zaentz revealed that they are working on a series adaptation. “We just made an arrangement with Kesey’s family, to possibly do a television series, but it’s based on the book and the book was told through the eyes of Chief Bromden. At the end of the first series, the Jack Nicholson character would die. And then the second year would be what happens to the Chief after he escapes. That I’m okay with, but never a remake of the movie.”

Without acknowledging that the old days were necessarily better Douglas ruminated on the stellar line-up for the best picture award Oscar in 1976 when Cuckoo’s Nest won through - Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, Barry Lyndon and Nashville. “We were really blessed by Saul and his ability to get the film financed indecently.” Previously Douglas and his father Kirk had tried for almost two decades to get the film made. He started off on the TV series The Streets Of San Francisco. Everyone, he suggests, thought he was “crazy” to leave the series to become a producer on Cuckoo’s Nest.

Douglas on his attitude to the craft, said: “I went through a period of thinking that the camera can tell when you are lying. So I tried a bit of method acting at one point in my career and it was painful and exhausting and then I came to Fatal Attraction. It was a lawyer in New York so, okay, I could be a lawyer in New York. He was an adulterer - possibly. Then the realisation came to me that acting is all about lying - all I needed to do was persuade people that what they were watching was the truth. That took off a lot of pressure.”

Producer Paul Saentz: Working on a TV series of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Photo: Film Servis Karlovy Vary

As for the current state of politics in the States Douglas is keen not to give any more airtime to the president. He concluded: “I look generally at how precious democracy is … how vulnerable it is and how it has to be protected, and how we gave to be reminded.

“My country is flirting with autocracy and is happening in other countries in the world. I hope that the fact reminder all the hard work Czechs did in gaining their freedom. Democracy is not be taken for granted and we all have to make our own efforts … it is not the job of somebody else. Politics now seems to be all about profit.

“People are going in to politics now to make money. Remains to be seen I prefer not to go into too much detail … I am worried and nervous and it is all of our responsibilities to look out for ourselves.”

With that Douglas is off, content to add a Crystal Globe Award for his contribution to film and the destival to add to his collection of gongs. “They’ve upgraded me,” he beamed.

The 59th Karlovy Vary Film Festival continues until 12 July.