Michael Douglas Quotes
Actor, Producer
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?
Cancer didn't bring me to my knees, it brought me to my feet.
The one thing that men and women have in common - they both like the company of men.
Like a lovely orchid, or anything else that's nurtured, marriage prospers and grows, but if it's ignored, it withers.
I'm impressed with the people from Chicago. Hollywood is hype, New York is talk, Chicago is work.
I come from a tough stock.
I don't smile a lot in my pictures. I'm always so... grim.
I don't wish ill will on anybody.
There's nothing like a family crisis, especially a divorce, to force a person to re-evaluate his life.
If a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is.
When I go on a holiday to a tropical place, I'll spray tan before I go.
The people who work in Wall Street still look up to Gordon Gekko. He's sort of a guru.
I'm a risk-taker. Most of my career has not been a joyful experience, but it has been challenging. I like the dangers.
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.
Everything's so repressive now - it's the No generation. You can't do anything, you can't eat anything, you have to abstain.
I enjoy provocative things that are questionable.
I had a great stepfather.
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.
I've always worked hard and played hard, and I'm sure I'll be cleaning up my act in the future.
Our economy is increasingly dependent on the success and integrity of the financial markets.
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.
'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.
When you're making pictures out of heartfelt passion, it hurts when someone calls them a calculated business move.
The thing with cancer is that you want to get it as early as you can.
'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.
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.
When you've accomplished a certain amount in your career, you're not so focused on your ambitions.
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.
Every empire eventually falls.
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.
For an actor, it's great fun to play one of these hungry white sharks. Audiences love to hate them.
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.
I have hardly ever worked with the same director twice. But when you have worked with a director before, you understand his behavior.
I met Michael Milken for the first time with Oliver Stone at the Drexel Burnham offices in Los Angeles.
I was there the night John Lennon was shot, three blocks away. It left a lasting impression on me.
Cancer has shown me what family is. It showed me a love that I never knew really existed.
Of course it's important to make mistakes, as long as you grow from them.
My daughter is a horseback rider, so I try to watch her ride; we take holidays together.
To me, Bermuda is a real family spot.
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.
Serious is when they tell you, 'You've got cancer.' Cancer is serious, but then the rest of it is not.
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.
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.
I've always been somebody who, when I started a picture, never knew what the next picture would be.
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.
Learning patience was not an easy lesson.
My movies are usually about stripping off the makeup, getting down to the skeleton.
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.
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.
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.
I haven't played a lot of nice guys.
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.
I don't think tongue cancer is the best cancer for an actor.
Chemotherapy takes its toll; the more you keep doing it, you lose your energy, and it gets more difficult to swallow.
The arts are a celebration of life.
I guess there are some women who like older men, but it's a smaller group.
I've always liked Tina Turner.
Retiring gives the impression that you're relieved that your job is over.
Control is what gives you privacy.
In 'Wall Street,' Charlie Sheen carried that movie.
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?
Directing talent is very nebulous. You know, it's not in front of you like an actor's performance.
Paul Rudd is ripped.
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.
Actors, I have to say, most of the time, they elevate things; they don't screw things up most of the time.
I'm an optimistic guy.
I've always tried to kind of stretch my wings as an actor and do things that are different.
Directors have so much else to do besides tell actors what to do. There are so many issues and problems.
Actresses have more fear of being disliked. I, on the other hand, revel in it.
When you are a celebrity, nothing remains secret for very long.
I don't ever do those kind of epic, huge, green-screen movies.
My dad was a movie star. Having that name was good and bad. People think it's a silver spoon. It's not.
Sometimes art imitates life.
Most of the stories I read are about my Hollywood pedigree.
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.
I try not to dwell too much on a bad marriage.
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.
Liberace was one of the biggest stars in America. He was a kind of a phenomenon.
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.
Of course I feel blessed that I have a wife that is 25 years younger.
My marriage and my families come certainly before my career.
I have some idea of the pressure of finding your own identity with a famous father.
My father did 90-plus films. He was Spartacus!
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.'
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.
The quality of health care in Canada is excellent.
Religion has certainly been shoved down my throat.
There are not a lot of sons or daughters of actors who have made it. Hollywood is awash with failures.
During my first marriage, my career was the most important thing in my life.
Like my father, like most actors, I was a pretty ambitious guy.
Liberace was a lovely guy.
Kids know. They know everything. I would err on the side of pretty much sharing everything.
I tell my kids they are going to live to over 100.
I went into rehab to save my marriage, but I wound up saving myself.
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.
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.
I love kids, and I love having had this second chance to have a family.
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?
I thought I could never be the actor Dad was, so I avoided it for a while.
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.