Michael Douglas Quotes
Quotations and aphorisms by Michael Douglas:
Directors have so much else to do besides tell actors what to do. There are so many issues and problems.
~Michael Douglas
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My mother is Bermudan, so I had a lot of memories when I was a kid, used to go down to Bermuda a lot.
~Michael Douglas
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You just have to know what your responsibility is to the movie, and live up to that, and be considerate of the other actors in the scene... I have never been competitive in that way - I always want my leading ladies to be as good as they possibly can be.
~Michael Douglas
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Early on, someone had told me, 'You know, the camera can always tell when you're lying.' And, Jesus, that intimidated me. 'The camera can always tell? How am I going to do this?' Until one day I thought, 'Wait a minute, acting is lying. Acting is all about lying.'
~Michael Douglas
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The studios basically, besides developing some material, their strength is distribution. Distribution in any other business is a cost that you incur. You know, in a trucking business, you eat it. In a film business, distribution is a profit center.
~Michael Douglas
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Do you know what absolute happiness is? For me, it is to wake up my kids in the morning - these little pieces of innocence - to wake them and find they're so happy to see me! It is unequivocal love, no question about it.
~Michael Douglas
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Chemotherapy takes its toll; the more you keep doing it, you lose your energy, and it gets more difficult to swallow.
~Michael Douglas
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Control is what gives you privacy.
~Michael Douglas
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I'm impressed with the people from Chicago. Hollywood is hype, New York is talk, Chicago is work.
~Michael Douglas
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I have some idea of the pressure of finding your own identity with a famous father.
~Michael Douglas
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My memories of Las Vegas were all with my father when I was, like, a teenager. He was best friends with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, and we'd come up and see the shows and go backstage afterwards and have dinner together. It was one of my first educations about stars and how they really are back stage.
~Michael Douglas
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I guess there are some women who like older men, but it's a smaller group.
~Michael Douglas
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Paul Rudd is ripped.
~Michael Douglas
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For an actor, it's great fun to play one of these hungry white sharks. Audiences love to hate them.
~Michael Douglas
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Actors, I have to say, most of the time, they elevate things; they don't screw things up most of the time.
~Michael Douglas
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For a long time, I can't say I was one who really enjoyed acting. I was always censoring it, or editing it, or analyzing it, rather than just going with it.
~Michael Douglas
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Of course it's important to make mistakes, as long as you grow from them.
~Michael Douglas
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Capitalism is part of our system, but it's not for the faint of heart.
~Michael Douglas
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Most of the stories I read are about my Hollywood pedigree.
~Michael Douglas
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People are goofy about the movie business, so you end up counting on friends you knew before you were successful. It is harder to make new friends because you are a little more cautious.
~Michael Douglas
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When you've accomplished a certain amount in your career, you're not so focused on your ambitions.
~Michael Douglas
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I'm an optimistic guy.
~Michael Douglas
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It's difficult for me to meet women because my crowd is much older. I know that for some of the young women I do meet, a relationship with me can be envisioned as a benefit to their career.
~Michael Douglas
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Like a lovely orchid, or anything else that's nurtured, marriage prospers and grows, but if it's ignored, it withers.
~Michael Douglas
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Retiring gives the impression that you're relieved that your job is over.
~Michael Douglas
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All the pictures I do are contemporary. I've sort of discovered I haven't really been into science fiction or period pictures. And so, in that vein, psychological thrillers play a big part.
~Michael Douglas
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Liberace was a lovely guy.
~Michael Douglas
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Sometimes we spend more efforts with people that are strangers in terms of making an impression than the person that's closest to us. And you just gotta remember not to take for granted that person that's closest to you.
~Michael Douglas
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When I was working on pictures with my father, there were a couple leading ladies to whom I wish I'd expressed how I felt rather than being too cool or too shy.
~Michael Douglas
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Cancer didn't bring me to my knees, it brought me to my feet.
~Michael Douglas
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Cancer has shown me what family is. It showed me a love that I never knew really existed.
~Michael Douglas
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When I go on a holiday to a tropical place, I'll spray tan before I go.
~Michael Douglas
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I went into rehab to save my marriage, but I wound up saving myself.
~Michael Douglas
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Our economy is increasingly dependent on the success and integrity of the financial markets.
~Michael Douglas
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My movies are usually about stripping off the makeup, getting down to the skeleton.
~Michael Douglas
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I was there the night John Lennon was shot, three blocks away. It left a lasting impression on me.
~Michael Douglas
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I don't smile a lot in my pictures. I'm always so... grim.
~Michael Douglas
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During my first marriage, my career was the most important thing in my life.
~Michael Douglas
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I think the quality of television, given the amount of time you have, how short you have, is proportionally so much better than most movies.
~Michael Douglas
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The people who work in Wall Street still look up to Gordon Gekko. He's sort of a guru.
~Michael Douglas
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I do think of myself as a bit of a loner, a bit of an independent. I'm one of those people who, when they're sick, like to curl up and remove myself. I don't like a lot of people around. There is nothing you can do to help.
~Michael Douglas
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The so-called 'last golden age,' in the 1970s, most of those movies were independent films.
~Michael Douglas
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It took me too long to realise that if you go to a marriage counsellor to resolve problems, it's in his interest to keep the marriage going.
~Michael Douglas
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Celebrity gets you access to world leaders.
~Michael Douglas
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A lot of actors get concerned about their own image, even going so far as to rewrite a movie to best serve that image. All I want to do is be in good movies.
~Michael Douglas
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My marriage and my families come certainly before my career.
~Michael Douglas
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I was undeclared. I was in my third year of school. They said you have to decide upon a major, and my father was an actor. My mother was an actress. So, I thought theater might be the way to go.
~Michael Douglas
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I don't look good in tights. I know that.
~Michael Douglas
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Actresses have more fear of being disliked. I, on the other hand, revel in it.
~Michael Douglas
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Everything's so repressive now - it's the No generation. You can't do anything, you can't eat anything, you have to abstain.
~Michael Douglas
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The message from national security experts and citizens around the world is clear: The only way to eliminate the global nuclear danger is to eliminate all nuclear weapons.
~Michael Douglas
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I've been dying to do a Marvel picture for so long.
~Michael Douglas
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Directing talent is very nebulous. You know, it's not in front of you like an actor's performance.
~Michael Douglas
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I met Michael Milken for the first time with Oliver Stone at the Drexel Burnham offices in Los Angeles.
~Michael Douglas
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Of course I feel blessed that I have a wife that is 25 years younger.
~Michael Douglas
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I enjoy provocative things that are questionable.
~Michael Douglas
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I had a great stepfather.
~Michael Douglas
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I try not to dwell too much on a bad marriage.
~Michael Douglas
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Like my father, like most actors, I was a pretty ambitious guy.
~Michael Douglas
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There's nothing like a family crisis, especially a divorce, to force a person to re-evaluate his life.
~Michael Douglas
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I come from a tough stock.
~Michael Douglas
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I tell my kids they are going to live to over 100.
~Michael Douglas
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There are not a lot of sons or daughters of actors who have made it. Hollywood is awash with failures.
~Michael Douglas
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My dad was a movie star. Having that name was good and bad. People think it's a silver spoon. It's not.
~Michael Douglas
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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?
~Michael Douglas
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'Wall Street' was a very important movie for me in terms of my career. I won an Oscar, and then the film 'Fatal Attraction' came right after it.
~Michael Douglas
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Liberace was one of the biggest stars in America. He was a kind of a phenomenon.
~Michael Douglas
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I have nothing against her, and in fact I'm very fond of my first wife. But we should have ended that marriage eight or 10 years earlier.
~Michael Douglas
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The thing with cancer is that you want to get it as early as you can.
~Michael Douglas
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The arts are a celebration of life.
~Michael Douglas
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I never really look at my movies.
~Michael Douglas
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Serious is when they tell you, 'You've got cancer.' Cancer is serious, but then the rest of it is not.
~Michael Douglas
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I don't wish ill will on anybody.
~Michael Douglas
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The one thing that men and women have in common - they both like the company of men.
~Michael Douglas
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In the movie 'Wall Street' I play Gordon Gekko, a greedy corporate executive who cheated to profit while innocent investors lost their savings. The movie was fiction, but the problem is real.
~Michael Douglas
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The Cold War's end pushed disarmament down most leaders' agendas. It's a sophisticated issue, which I think is one reason why it is not so hands-on to many people. It's not visceral. It's not like a starving child.
~Michael Douglas
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I love kids, and I love having had this second chance to have a family.
~Michael Douglas
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My mother and father met at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He was a senior and she was a junior, and their marriage didn't last very long.
~Michael Douglas
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I don't ever do those kind of epic, huge, green-screen movies.
~Michael Douglas
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Every empire eventually falls.
~Michael Douglas
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If your work isn't exciting, doesn't stir the emotions, where's the challenge? Where's the progress if you always play it safe?
~Michael Douglas
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My father did 90-plus films. He was Spartacus!
~Michael Douglas
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I've always liked Tina Turner.
~Michael Douglas
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Learning patience was not an easy lesson.
~Michael Douglas
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When you are a celebrity, nothing remains secret for very long.
~Michael Douglas
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I haven't played a lot of nice guys.
~Michael Douglas
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I grew up on the East Coast and was going to go to an Ivy League School, but at the last minute I decided to be a hippy. It was the protest movements on the war, peace movements were going on at our university. It was a fantastic time.
~Michael Douglas
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If a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is.
~Michael Douglas
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When you're making pictures out of heartfelt passion, it hurts when someone calls them a calculated business move.
~Michael Douglas
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I've always been somebody who, when I started a picture, never knew what the next picture would be.
~Michael Douglas
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Women are now very comfortable to have babies into their late 30s. You can be a father in your 50s. I'm not saying it's for everybody, and I think people have to get their own life secure before they take on the responsibility of a partner and children.
~Michael Douglas
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'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' which my father had tried to get made for six, seven years, and I for four, was turned down by every studio. Every studio in the world had passed on it.
~Michael Douglas
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I've never been one to carefully calculate my career decisions, to sit on the outside looking in. I go with my passion and what moves me.
~Michael Douglas
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I think sometimes in relationships, ladies like having a man who takes care of them, nurtures them. If you can't find it in a man your own age, you find it in somebody who is older.
~Michael Douglas
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I don't think tongue cancer is the best cancer for an actor.
~Michael Douglas
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Sometimes art imitates life.
~Michael Douglas
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'King of California' was just, I thought, a really great, fresh, original kind of script. I loved the tone, the mix of tragedy, comedy, and drama, and that it was a good part.
~Michael Douglas
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To me, Bermuda is a real family spot.
~Michael Douglas
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There is something about seeing rhinos and lions running free that excites you. It's not that you feel afraid; it's more like you're liberated by seeing them.
~Michael Douglas
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I've always tried to kind of stretch my wings as an actor and do things that are different.
~Michael Douglas
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I've taken blame about being a bad father - if being a bad father is working your butt off trying to create a career at one time.
~Michael Douglas
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The quality of health care in Canada is excellent.
~Michael Douglas
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'Five Easy Pieces,' 'Easy Rider' - those are indie pictures; those were not studio pictures. They had relationships with studio distribution, but they were indies.
~Michael Douglas
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I believe there is a spirit within us, which we nurture based upon our efforts and what we bring to the world. But it doesn't come from the outside; it comes from the inside.
~Michael Douglas
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I'm a risk-taker. Most of my career has not been a joyful experience, but it has been challenging. I like the dangers.
~Michael Douglas
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Kids know. They know everything. I would err on the side of pretty much sharing everything.
~Michael Douglas
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Religion has certainly been shoved down my throat.
~Michael Douglas
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With 'Black Rain,' I spent a lot of time with homicide detectives, and I spent a lot of time with different brokers on 'Wall Street.' It helps get the rhythm of the piece and the tone, and how overplayed or underplayed it might be. That's also the magic of movies: You get to hang out and live these different lives.
~Michael Douglas
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I thought I could never be the actor Dad was, so I avoided it for a while.
~Michael Douglas
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I don't know if likeable, pleasant characters have enough conflict for me to want to do them. I admire those people, but I've never been that kind of screen presence who can do nothing. I need to do something.
~Michael Douglas
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I have hardly ever worked with the same director twice. But when you have worked with a director before, you understand his behavior.
~Michael Douglas
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I don't know about Brad Pitt leaving that beautiful woman to go hold orphans for Angelina. I mean how long is that going to last?
~Michael Douglas
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I've just kind of been used to carrying movies. I look back and I'm just used to being in every single scene in a lot of pictures.
~Michael Douglas
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I've always worked hard and played hard, and I'm sure I'll be cleaning up my act in the future.
~Michael Douglas
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My daughter is a horseback rider, so I try to watch her ride; we take holidays together.
~Michael Douglas
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In 'Wall Street,' Charlie Sheen carried that movie.
~Michael Douglas
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