Michael Douglas

I'm a risk-taker. Most of my career has not been a joyful experience, but it has been challenging. I like the dangers.

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?

Liberace was one of the biggest stars in America. He was a kind of a phenomenon.

Like a lovely orchid, or anything else that's nurtured, marriage prospers and grows, but if it's ignored, it withers.

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.

My daughter is a horseback rider, so I try to watch her ride; we take holidays together.

I don't smile a lot in my pictures. I'm always so... grim.

Like my father, like most actors, I was a pretty ambitious guy.

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 thought I could never be the actor Dad was, so I avoided it for a while.

The arts are a celebration of life.

There's nothing like a family crisis, especially a divorce, to force a person to re-evaluate his life.

My dad was a movie star. Having that name was good and bad. People think it's a silver spoon. It's not.

I don't think tongue cancer is the best cancer for an actor.

I've always tried to kind of stretch my wings as an actor and do things that are different.

Sometimes art imitates life.

'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.

My father did 90-plus films. He was Spartacus!

I tell my kids they are going to live to over 100.

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.'

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.

Chemotherapy takes its toll the more you keep doing it you lose your energy and it gets more difficult to swallow.

Our economy is increasingly dependent on the success and integrity of the financial markets.

Liberace was a lovely guy.

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.

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.

I try not to dwell too much on a bad marriage.

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.

Relationships are like bubbles theyre fragile.

When you are a celebrity, nothing remains secret for very long.

Kids know. They know everything. I would err on the side of pretty much sharing everything.

Directing talent is very nebulous. You know, it's not in front of you like an actor's performance.

I've always been somebody who, when I started a picture, never knew what the next picture would be.

During my first marriage, my career was the most important thing in my life.

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.

For an actor, it's great fun to play one of these hungry white sharks. Audiences love to hate them.

Control is what gives you privacy.

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.

Capitalism is part of our system, but it's not for the faint of heart.

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.

I don't wish ill will on anybody.

I've always liked Tina Turner.

Being single is pretty good. Its a nice sense of irresponsibility.

I'm impressed with the people from Chicago. Hollywood is hype, New York is talk, Chicago is work.

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.

Of course it's important to make mistakes, as long as you grow from them.

I was there the night John Lennon was shot, three blocks away. It left a lasting impression on me.

Retiring gives the impression that you're relieved that your job is over.

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.

When you've accomplished a certain amount in your career, you're not so focused on your ambitions.

My movies are usually about stripping off the makeup, getting down to the skeleton.

Actresses have more fear of being disliked. I, on the other hand, revel in it.

Paul Rudd is ripped.

I never really look at my movies.

I don't ever do those kind of epic, huge, green-screen movies.

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.

I have hardly ever worked with the same director twice. But when you have worked with a director before, you understand his behavior.

The one thing that men and women have in common - they both like the company of men.

My marriage and my families come certainly before my career.

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.

Learning patience was not an easy lesson.

Chemotherapy takes its toll; the more you keep doing it, you lose your energy, and it gets more difficult to swallow.

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.

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.

When you're making pictures out of heartfelt passion, it hurts when someone calls them a calculated business move.

I love kids, and I love having had this second chance to have a family.

To me, Bermuda is a real family spot.

Cancer didnt bring me to my knees it brought me to my feet.

Actors, I have to say, most of the time, they elevate things; they don't screw things up most of the time.

The people who work in Wall Street still look up to Gordon Gekko. He's sort of a guru.

Everything's so repressive now - it's the No generation. You can't do anything, you can't eat anything, you have to abstain.

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.

Directors have so much else to do besides tell actors what to do. There are so many issues and problems.

I went into rehab to save my marriage, but I wound up saving myself.

I haven't played a lot of nice guys.

Of course I feel blessed that I have a wife that is 25 years younger.

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.

Human Rights for everyone is the necessary foundation upon which all of us may build a world where everybody may live in peace and serenity and plenty.

Cigar smoking by its very nature is much more reflective than interactive.

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 thing with cancer is that you want to get it as early as you can.

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?

I enjoy provocative things that are questionable.

Most of the stories I read are about my Hollywood pedigree.

If a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is.

In 'Wall Street,' Charlie Sheen carried that movie.

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've always worked hard and played hard, and I'm sure I'll be cleaning up my act in the future.

Cigar smoking by it's very nature is much more reflective than interactive.

When I go on a holiday to a tropical place, I'll spray tan before I go.

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.

I'm an optimistic guy.

The quality of health care in Canada is excellent.

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.

Serious is when they tell you, 'You've got cancer.' Cancer is serious, but then the rest of it is not.

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.

Cancer has shown me what family is. It showed me a love that I never knew really existed.

Cancer didn't bring me to my knees, it brought me to my feet.

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?

I guess there are some women who like older men, but it's a smaller group.