Oscar-winning actor and producer Michael Douglas helped kick off the Taormina Film Festival here in Sicily, speaking candidly during a press conference ahead of accepting a Lifetime Achievement award on opening night.
A longtime activist, Douglas was spurred on to advocate for nuclear disarmament by his involvement in 1979’s China Syndrome. While he was in Taormina on Tuesday to reflect on his career and celebrate the 50th anniversary of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a question inevitably was posed to him about the state of the world today amid ongoing global conflicts.
Said Douglas, “Since this is a film festival and since it’s very difficult to spend five minutes not mentioning ‘the big T,’ I prefer not to get into this.” However, he continued, “I was born at the end of World War II, but in my lifetime, this is the worst time that I can ever remember. There’s much too much conflict in the world. It’s all the more reason why we should be making movies, being creative … I am not happy to see the defense budgets increasing across the board. My country in particular, insisting and demanding other countries increase their military budgets. I have a hard time understanding why, with all the AI and how intelligent we are as human beings, how we can possibly be having as many wars and conflicts as we are. It’s ridiculous.”
As the local audience responded with applause, Douglas added: “I realize that my country bears a lot of the responsibility to the chaos that exists in the world. I apologize and I’m embarrassed — to my friends, be it my neighbors in Canada or Mexico, or all the countries in the EU and NATO — I’m embarrassed and I apologize. But beyond that, I really do not want to give the benefit of having more discussion about our president.”
Douglas also broached another, entirely different type of controversy when he spoke of criticisms launched at so-called “nepo babies.” Douglas himself is a “second generation” actor, following in the footsteps of his legendary father Kirk. To the audience, he said, “I don’t know about you, but I think everybody tries to get their son or daughter to work in the same industry. I don’t know why they picked on actors. If you’re a carpenter, you want your son or your daughter to join you … The reality is that if you’re second generation, you’re trying to establish your own image, your own identity.”
Douglas noted that winning the Best Actor Oscar, for Oliver Stone’s 1987 treatise on capitalism, Wall Street, “was the first time I felt that I was out of the shadow of my dad … Wall Street was crucial for me, and giving myself the confidence to know that I was accepted as an actor, because I always felt people like to think because you’re second generation, ‘Oh, well, your father helped you.’”
Also pivotal in 1987 was Adrian Lyne’s Fatal Attraction, “which was a very big commercial success and a good movie. So for me, a combination of getting the acknowledgement of the Oscar plus having a commercial movie changed the direction of my career.”
Speaking later in the evening at a ceremony honoring him, Douglas noted, “When I’m here I can’t stop thinking of my father and his love for Italy and how much time we spent here and I’m touched now when I realize that between my father and I, we made over 150 movies and we spanned 80 years … All three of my children want to be actors, so it may be continuing for another generation.”
