Douglas didn't have a Hollywood upbringing. His parents, Kirk and Diana Douglas, divorced when he was six, and he was raised by his mother in New York and Connecticut far from the glare of his father's stardom. It was a happy childhood, thanks in large part to his parents, who both remarried and remained on good terms after the divorce, and to his stepfather, Bill Darrid, who became his primary male influence. "I always advocate stepparents," he proclaims. "I'm very blessed and fortunate to have a great stepfather and a great stepmother."
He would visit his father in the summers, often on location on movie sets, and later worked summer jobs on his father's film crews, where he not only watched his father work but also learned the business. It helped ground him later in his career, he recalled, seeing how film professionals conducted their lives, but it didn't occur to him to be an actor until he was a college student at USC Santa Barbara. "I was a hippie, I had a lot of fun," he recalled, and theater was almost an afterthought. He was, in his own words, terrible in his first plays but soon enough rose to the top of his class, earning the respect of his fellow students and his father, who came to see Douglas in almost all of his college productions despite his busy career. Kirk never actively encouraged his son to follow in his footsteps as an actor, but he was always supportive. Perhaps the most powerful dimension of the interview is how Michael acknowledges Kirk's love and support as a constant throughout his life.
Douglas landed a few TV movies and series guest shots, but his breakthrough came when producer Quinn Martin cast him as the young partner to veteran Karl Malden in the new TV show The Streets of San Francisco (1972-1977). "My mentor," is how Douglas describes Malden, who instilled a work ethic in the young actor. Douglas learned about film structure and characterization and all aspects of production, and it gave him the tools he needed to strike out and develop his own production: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). His father optioned the rights before the book was published and transformed it into a stage play but could never get a film version financed. With his father's blessing, Michael teamed up with another first time producer, Saul Zaentz, and émigré director Milos Forman to make the film... but without Kirk in the lead, a fact that the elder Douglas never fails to mention. As Michael reminds us, his dad came out of it just fine. The film earned five Academy Awards and $200 million (on a budget of less than $5 million), and Kirk enjoyed a share of the profits. "He made more money off of that movie than any movie he made in his career."
Despite the success, Douglas had a hard time getting his own acting career going since leaving The Streets of San Francisco, so he cast himself in his next two productions, The China Syndrome (1979) and Romancing the Stone (1984). Mankiewicz guides Douglas through the highlights of his career--from Fatal Attraction (1987) and Wall Street (1987) to Wonder Boys (2000) and Behind the Candelabra (2013)--and Douglas regales the audience with choice stories. The truth of the cliché "the camera never lies" finally came home while working on his character for Fatal Attraction: "I lie every day," he realized, "and it totally freed me up." For Wall Street, Oliver Stone pushed Douglas to get "just a little bit more Kirk Douglas repressed anger," and that anger helped him win his Oscar for Best Actor.
Through it all, Douglas is modest about his talent--"I think of myself as a workman, as a craftsman," he shares--and generously calls out the contributions of his directors and his fellow actors. And he gets personal as he recalls his battle with stage IV cancer and the lessons learned from his father's recovery from a deadly helicopter crash in the 1990s. "As proud as I am of all that he accomplished, to watch what he has done in the third act of his life has been amazing," Douglas tells us, and he took that example to heart, spending more time with his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and his children. "You start not taking your years for granted."
By Sean Axmaker
