Michael Douglas is opening up about his decision to step away from Hollywood.
During a press conference at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic on Saturday, July 5, the Basic Instinct actor, 80, explained why he has no immediate plans to return to acting.
“I have not worked since 2022 purposefully because I realized I had to stop,” Michael said, per Variety. “I had been working pretty hard for almost 60 years, and I did not want to be one of those people who dropped dead on the set.”
He continued, “I have no real intentions of going back. I say I’m not retired because if something special came up, I’d go back, but otherwise, no.”
Michael did share that he has “one little independent movie” he is currently attempting to “get a good script out of.” But otherwise, he joked, he is “happy to play the wife” to his wife of nearly 25 years, Catherine Zeta-Jones, “in the spirit of maintaining a good marriage,” per Variety.
Michael was at the film festival to introduce the screening of a newly restored version of Miloš Forman’s 1975 classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, starring Jack Nicholson. During his introduction, he was surprised with a Crystal Globe statuette from the festival’s executive director.
