I’m even older than the Festival!’ – Michael Douglas receives prestigious award at Cannes
Who can forget the steamy scenes in Michael Douglas’s 1992 film Basic Instinct? Celebrating his latest award at the Cannes Film Festival, the actor, 78, discusses Sharon Stone, growing up in his father Kirk’s shadow, and the possibility of a joint screen role with his wife Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Michael Douglas is no stranger to the Cannes Film Festival. He first appeared there 44 years ago for the edge-of-the-seat – and some would say prophetic – nuclear disaster thriller The China Syndrome.
He followed that 13 years later with the steamy murder drama Basic Instinct, that thrust Sharon Stone into the public eye, and, in 2012, raised eyebrows and touched hearts with his surprisingly tender portrayal of over-the-top pianist Liberace in Behind The Candelabra.
Along the way, of course, he’s garnered just one or two little other professional accolades – like, for instance, two Oscars (Best Picture for One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest in 1976 and Best Actor for Wall Street in 1988), five Golden Globes and myriad others.
So it was fitting that this year, at the 76th Cannes Festival, the 78-year-old actor should receive arguably its most prestigious prize, the coveted Honorary Palme d’Or in recognition of his brilliant career, both acting in front of the camera, and producing behind it.
The audience burst into tumultuous applause when Michael, silver-haired and elegant as ever, took to the stage, to declare firmly, “There’s only one Cannes,” before adding, with his trademark wry humour: “I’m even older than the Festival!”
The day after the ceremony, relaxing in the elegant Salon des Ambassadeurs at the Palais des Festivals, he acknowledged feeling privileged at receiving the award.
“I feel I have a good batting average,” he says modestly. “To use a baseball term, I can’t say they’ve all been home runs –
obviously, we all have our failures, and I have movies that I’ve worked on and love, that nobody has seen.
“But I have a lot of hits, too, and – to continue the baseball analogy – if I were to be a batter, I feel I’d be about the third up. Overall, I’m proud. I’m very proud.”
Cannes has not always been successful for him and Basic Instinct, in 1992, was met with mixed reactions. The film’s famously steamy sex scenes left the festival audience – to coin a phrase – stone cold.
“The screen was almost too big for what was going on!” he recalls.
“I remember the dinner afterwards was very quiet – nobody quite knew what to say after that. But that’s all right. Sharon Stone had a fabulous, wonderful part, and she was great in it.”
One of the aspects Michael most loves about Cannes is the lack of rivalry bet-ween actors and filmmakers. It’s “only the joy of the cinema” that he feels.
And I love the fact that, in Cannes, people are happy for you, no matter what country you’re from,” he adds. “One of the dangers of social media is it can separate us, and I think we all need to have something to bring us closer as human beings. I find Cannes has always been friendly and supportive to everyone.”
He explains how he has a very personal connection to the festival. It was here, back in the 1950s, that his father, the legendary actor Kirk Douglas, a couple of years divorced from Michael’s mother Diana, met a pretty French journalist called Anne. Later, with Anne, Kirk would forge one of the most famously happy marriages in Hollywood.
“Anne was a publicist here at the festival. She worked with him and that started it,” Michael continues. “Anne was my stepmother for 63 years, and I was very close to her and loved her very much. She and my mother were close too, so I benefited from having step-parents who all liked each other.”
Born in New Jersey, in 1944, and schooled in New York City, Massachusetts and Connecticut, Michael later studied dramatic art at university in California.
His father, who died in 2020, was one of the most celebrated US actors of the 20th century thanks to roles in films such as Spartacus, Paths of Glory, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and The Heroes of Telemark.
Michael has revealed that his relationship with Kirk – which became closer as both men grew older – had been rocky in his youth. “In the beginning there was a certain resentment,” he explains.
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