Michael Douglas Says He’s Done Acting: “I Had to Stop”

He might have said “Greed is good” on screen once, but Michael Douglas is not feeling greedy about acting roles anymore. While presenting a new print of his Oscar-winning classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival on Saturday, July 5th, the esteemed actor and producer said that his absence from the screen in recent years has not been accidental: “I have not worked since 2022 purposefully because I realized I had to stop.”

As Variety reports, Douglas noted that he “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.”

Douglas’s last major role in a movie was the 2023 Marvel adventure Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania; he also reprised the role of Hank Pym in the animated MCU series What If…?, and last year starred as Benjamin Franklin in the Apple TV+ series Franklin. He also has the independent feature Looking Through Water set to come out in 2025, in which he stars alongside his son Cameron.

While Douglas might have stopped working — he instead says he’s happy to “play the wife” in his marriage to Catherine Zeta-Jones — don’t call it a retirement. “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.”

One person who might be happy about Douglas taking a break: Actor Michael Keaton. The Batman star’s real name is Michael Douglas — and he recently said he wants it back.