Michael Douglas Gives Surprising Career Update

Michael Douglas has “no real intentions” of returning to acting — but the Oscar winner doesn’t consider himself retired.

Douglas, 80, revealed during a press conference at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival that his battle with throat cancer had a major impact on his life and career.

“Stage 4 cancer is not a holiday, but there aren’t many choices, are there?” he said, as per Variety. “I went with the program, involving chemo and radiation, and was fortunate. The surgery would have meant not being able to talk and removing part of my jaw and that would have been limiting as an actor.”

“I have not worked since 2022 purposefully because I realized I had to stop,” he continued. “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 Wall Street actor noted, “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.”

Douglas does have “one little independent movie” he is “trying to get a good script out of,” but added that “in the spirit of maintaining a good marriage,” he is “happy to play the wife” to his wife of 24 years, actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, at the moment.

The Behind the Candelabra actor also spoke at length during the press conference about the current state of politics in the U.S., saying that the country is “flirting with autocracy.”

“I look at it generally as the fact of how precious democracy is, of how vulnerable it is and how it always has to be protected,” he noted. “I hope that what we’re struggling with right now is a reminder of all the hard work the Czechs did in gaining their freedom and independence. Politics now seem to be for profit. Money has entered democracy as a profit center. People are going into politics now to make money. We maintained an ideal, an idealism in the U.S., which does not exist now.”

While he didn’t want to go into “too much detail,” as the “news speaks for itself,” Douglas added, “I myself am worried, I am nervous, and I think it’s all of our responsibility to look out for ourselves.”