Michael Douglas says it’s ‘joyous’ to have kids late in life but teachers thought he was grandfather
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Michael Douglas has said parenting later in life has made him a better father, even if he occasionally gets mistaken for his children’s granddad.
Describing the ups and downs of raising children into his 70s, the 79-year-old Oscar-winning actor recalled the confusion he encountered on visiting his children’s university.
“This is not grandfather’s day, this is parents’ day. I say ‘I am a parent!’,” he said. “That was a rough one.”
Douglas said that having a second family in later life, having married Catherine Zeta-Jones, 54, made him a better father and admitted struggling during his first marriage.
Raising Dylan, 23, and Carys, 20, from his 25-year marriage to Zeta-Jones, has been a “good ride”, he said.
But Douglas said that he regrets missing out on his eldest son Cameron’s childhood with ex-wife Diandra Luker because he was “overloaded” by Hollywood. He famously wrote to a judge overseeing a case involving Cameron and blamed himself for being “a bad father”.
“Cameron suffered a lot from that time . . . I was just overwhelmed and overloaded by my work. And family was really taking third place after work, our country and then the family, as opposed to when Catherine and I got together.
“And you’ve done enough work already that you were looking more to enjoy the opportunity and the kids,” he said.
He admitted his age meant that he could not always keep up with his children but is enjoying an “empty nest”.
“I’m just sliding by just now. I’ve reached the point in terms of skiing and a couple of other activities that I’m no longer able to keep up with them on any basis.
“But it’s nice having somebody look after you and say, ‘ You okay dad?’“ he said.
“This has been a great time for me but I’ve been very fortunate. Catherine and I have been together, it’ll be 25 years this year. So it’s been a good ride and I’ve been very fortunate, happy with the choices that I’ve made and now am kind of really backing off and smelling the roses a little more, travelling more.
“We’re empty nesters so we can get around a lot more than we used to raising two children in your fifties, sixties, and into your seventies?
“I have to thank my kids, Dylan and Carys. They’re just extraordinary beings. I probably certainly have to thank their mum and Catherine. They’ve just been a joy. We’ve had no issues per se. Had a lovely, lovely life together. Dylan is completely out of school now and Carys has got one more year of college.
“But they brought both Catherine and I, just a tremendous amount of joy.”
Speaking to CBS, Douglas said that grew up in a broken home after his father, Kirk Douglas, divorced his mother, leaving him in New York while his father worked in Los Angeles.
“Judging from being out here, living in LA as the children of successful actors or well-known people is rough.
“I have consciously most of my life lived either in Santa Barbara after I went to school here for a while, or back east in New York City or New York state. I just think it’s easier to raise kids - rather than being just totally overwhelmed by showbiz, which is what happens for a lot of people when they’re living in Los Angeles. It’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It’s very hard to get out of that little bubble.
“I mean a lot of it has to do with the choices. Like my mother remarried and my stepfather, Bill Darrid who Kirk was the first one to call my surrogate father, was a lovely, lovely man and a great listener. And I just think it was an environment that we were nurtured my brother and I, and really loved and appreciated them.
“So the interesting thing I always get, because we always get this thing called Hollywood royalty, and my folks got divorced very, very early on in my father’s career. He was just beginning his acting career per se when we moved back to New York, it wasn’t any fancy apartment. He was facing a back alley. And so we lived middle class at best.”
But Douglas said eventually his once-broken family flourished.
“The other beauty of the fact was that my stepfather, Bill, and Kirk, and my stepmother Ann and my mother Diana, were the best of friends. They got along great. And so I think also for me, the idea of stepparents was very positive because both my parents were happy.
“And I think so many times we hear about these wicked stepmothers and stepfathers, when the reality is that there’s a lot of wonderful stepparents out there who out of their love for their partner except these children from another marriage. And I wish we’d hear more about the good stepparent stories rather than the ones that are not. “
