Michael Douglas

Money never sleeps, pal

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

My marriage and my families come certainly before my career.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 have some idea of the pressure of finding your own identity with a famous father.