Michael Douglas shares heartbreaking reason he's quit acting for good

Michael Douglas claims it would take ‘something special’ for him to return to acting as the two-time Academy Award winner opened up on how his health has impacted his career.

With almost six decades of experience under his belt, Michael Douglas, 80, is one of film and TV’s paramount players.

Over the years, the Fatal Attraction star has clocked up five Golden Globe Awards, a Prime Time Emmy for his role in HBO’s Behind the Candelabra, the prestigious AFI Life Achievement Award, and so many more gongs.

But the Hollywood favorite has taken a step back from acting in recent years, with his last blockbuster being 2023’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

Speaking at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Douglas has explained the decision behind his extensive hiatus.

Michael Douglas has been acting for almost six decades (MICHAL CIZEK/AFP via Getty Images)

As reported by Variety, the father-of-three described his Stage 4 throat cancer, which he was diagnosed with in August 2010, as not being much of ‘a holiday’.

“But there aren’t many choices, are there?” he continued. “I went with the program, involving chemo and radiation, and was fortunate.

“The surgery would have meant not being able to talk and removing part of my jaw and that would have been limiting as an actor.”

The Wall Street icon explained that he ‘purposefully’ hasn’t worked since 2022 because he realized he ‘had to stop’.

The actor, known for Wall Street and Fatal Attraction, was diagnosed with cancer in 2010 (Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for The Red Sea International Film Festival)

“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. 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.”

However, Douglas did claim that he had a single ‘independent movie’ on the cards that he was trying to ‘get a good script out of’.

He added that he was very happy to stay home and ‘play the wife’ to Welsh movie icon Catherine Zeta-Jones, 55, whom he has been married to since 2000.

Douglas, who has portrayed Dr Hank Pym in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) since 2015, has not been listed as part of the cast of the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday.

Douglas portrayed Hank Pym in four MCU movies (Marvel Studios/Disney)

It’s not known whether he will make an uncredited appearance alongside the likes of Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man and Robert Downey Jr., who returns to the franchise as Doctor Doom.

When Douglas was asked by Deadline if he had any plans to make his fifth outing as Pym in the MCU, the star responded: “I don’t think so. I had the experience, and I was excited to do it. I’d never done a green screen picture before.”

Douglas has two upcoming credits according to IMDB. These include the Paramount Television Studios series Reagan & Gorbachev and Roberto Sneider’s Looking Through Water.