Michael Douglas on 'immortality,' Kirk Douglas and the memories he once avoided

NEW YORK (AP) — Michael Douglas, the award-winning actor and producer, recently turned 82. He is a cancer survivor, a recovered addict, a married man, the father and son of actors. He is also an author, who begins his memoir with a message of thanks to his family — past and present and future — for the “sense of immortality.”

Immortality.

“Many times my father was asked, ‘Kirk, are you jealous of your son?'” he said during a recent interview at a Manhattan hotel, referring to his late father, fellow actor and sometime combatant Kirk Douglas. “And he said, ‘Jealous?’ This is a sense of immortality, a continuity of generations.'”

Family is how Douglas anchors his legacy and his place in a world he fears is breaking down. But there are other ways to live on past your own time: starring in cultural touchstones like “Fatal Attraction” or “Basic Instinct,” or writing a 500-page book that is called “One Helluva Ride,” a famous man's journey from rebellion and coming-of-age, to midlife success and transgression to the inevitable reckoning with mortality and past mistakes.

Publishing on Tuesday, his memoir is framed around the making of some of his most notable movies, including “Basic Instinct,” “Fatal Attraction,” “Falling Down,” “Romancing the Stone” and two films that brought him Oscars: as a producer of best picture winner “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest” and as star of “Wall Street,” when his turn as corporate raider Gordon Gekko brought him the prize for best actor and helped make “Greed is good” a catch phrase for the late 1980s.

Douglas himself was once enough a symbol of hedonism that he was rumored to be undergoing treatment for sex addiction. False, he says, but in his memoir he acknowledges that at the time he met Catherine Zeta-Jones, whom he married in 2000, he was dating five other women. They were all in different cities, he explained during his interview, and “as long as you weren't seeing somebody else in the same city that might embarrass her, they were all right.”

He is now well settled with Zeta-Jones and satisfied enough with his career that he no longer has any great drive to top himself; he's just as happy taking a walk in the garden. But Douglas also sees the book as a baring of dilthe most painful moments of his life: his near-archetypal quest to forge an identity apart from his father; a childhood damaged by violence and divorce that only was resolved in the latter part of Kirk's life; Douglas' own divorce from first wife, Diandra Luker; the substance abuse battles of Michael and son Cameron Douglas, who spent seven years in prison on drug charges; and the diagnosis of Stage IV tongue cancer in 2010 that he at first assumed would kill him.

Wearing a dark blazer, blue shirt and no tie, Douglas is a warm and open conversationalist. During his interview, he spoke of the awesome burdens and privileges of being Kirk Douglas' son, his improbable decision to become an actor, too, and the single line of dialogue he says comes closest to the truth about himself.

Questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.

DOUGLAS: I looked at dad as just Superman. He was so dynamic. He was so strong. He has such tenacity. I watched him on the screen as Spartacus, saw him as Ulysses ... I never thought I could be the man my father was. I didn't think it was in the cards. It took me a long time to gain confidence and then to make a lot of the same mistakes he made.

DOUGLAS: I never thought about being an actor until I was in college. I had no major. And they called me into the office, “You got to declare a major. You can’t just take general education courses.” I was a bit of a hippie at the time. And I thought, “Well, my mother (Diana Douglas) is an actress, and I had seen her doing stage productions. And my father ....” So I thought it would be an easy course.

I started then performing in school. I had terrible, terrible stage fright, you know, (vomiting in) wastebaskets off stage.

DOUGLAS: I wanted to overcome my stage fright. I wanted to fight the uncomfortable feeling I had of being in front of a camera.

DOUGLAS: I think that’s probably true. I think I inherited my father’s tenacity, my father’s ambition, and his rage. He had a big temper growing up. There must have been this desire to feel like I was somebody. Because growing up, I was always the son of ....

DOUGLAS: They (his parents) had good friends and everything, but there was always an isolation about him. And I find I have a bit of that, too.

As far as a line for myself, I always love in “Falling Down,” when he (an unemployed defense worker who turns violent) says “I'm the bad guy?”

DOUGLAS: I’m fairly tough on myself in the book and, you know, honest. I tried to do the right thing but have found myself in situations where it appears that I am the bad guy.

DOUGLAS: I can’t say I would. I do not believe that you can balance career with family. You just can’t balance it. So I’m always saying to my kids or anybody else that will listen — get your career out of the way before you think about marrying and having kids. That affected my first marriage, because I was consumed.

DOUGLAS: No.

DOUGLAS: Because I was very uncomfortable talking about the early years and his physical abuse. He was of a generation that hit; my mother used the hairbrush. He was tough. That was also one of the reasons why it took a little time to warm up as we got older, and to forgive him.

DOUGLAS: Time heals, you know. Hopefully. Life moves on. Dad had that great line right after I won (the Oscar) for “Wall Street.” He said to me, “You know, I would have been nicer to you if I knew how successful you were going to be.”

FILE - Actor Michael Douglas, left, and his wife Catherine Zeta-Jones appear at a ceremony honoring him with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles on Nov. 6, 2018. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - Kirk Douglas, left, appears with his son Michael Douglas at a Friar's Club dinner in New York, on April 22, 1977. (AP Photo/Carlos Rene Perez, File)

FILE - Michael Douglas, co-producer of the film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," holds the Oscar he won by the picture at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles on March 29, 1976. (AP Photo, File)

Michael Douglas poses for a portrait on Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP)

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — A Spanish Supreme Court judge lifted the arrest warrant for Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont on Tuesday, clearing the way for him to return home without fear of detention for the first time in nearly a decade.

Puigdemont, Catalonia’s former regional president, fled Spain for Belgium in 2017 after leading a failed attempt to break Catalonia away from Spain. He has since avoided attempts by Spain to have him sent back to face a court, while many of his confidants and supporters spent time in prison.

Now he looks set to go back to Spain just when the country is preparing for a national election next month. It is too early to know how his return will impact the campaign, but given his unpopularity in most of Spain, it is likely that opposition parties will try to use his return against incumbent Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

The 63-year-old Puigdemont scored a major legal victory when Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena lifted his arrest warrant moments after Spain’s Constitutional Court announced it would apply a government amnesty for the Catalan separatists to one of Puigdemont’s political allies who had been found guilty of misusing public funds.

Llarena said he was lifting the arrest warrant for Puigdemont while awaiting the opportunity to study the Constitutional Court’s decision, which he said would likely affect the warrant.

Puigdemont's party in Catalonia, Junts, said he will give a press conference later Tuesday from Waterloo, Belgium, where he has lived since he fled Spain.

From Waterloo, Puigdemont has maintained a loyal following among committed Catalan separatists, even as the independence movement has weakened. His penchant for the audacious was on display in 2024 when Puigdemont suddenly appeared in Barcelona, gave a public speech and slipped through the police's grip.

He has also kept control of his Junts party from abroad, maintaining an outsized role in Spanish politics.

Junts “No” was decisive in Spain's progressive government losing two key votes in Parliament this week when it tried to push through emergency housing measures amid street protests.

Puigdemont's fate has been linked to that of Prime Minister Sánchez.

Sánchez was only able to remain in power in 2023 when Puigdemont's Junts backed his formation of a new government in exchange for the amnesty. This week Sánchez responded to Junts scuttling his housing measures by calling a snap election for Nov. 29, hoping the discontent over housing will mobilize his voters.

FILE - In this April 18, 2018 file photo, former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont attends a meeting with lawmakers of his party, Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia), in Berlin, Germany. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn, file)