Actor Michael Douglas still remains a top Hollywood A-lister even after his decades’ worth of work in the film industry. But there was one film where the Oscar-winner remembered he started to feel his age.
Michael Douglas couldn’t keep up with his younger co-stars in ‘The Sentinel’
The Sentinel was a 2006 thriller where Douglas played a secret service agent accused of trying to assassinate the President. He worked alongside 24 star Kiefer Sutherland and Eva Longoria on the project, and was drawn to the movie after a three-year hiatus from filming .Douglas, admitted, however, that he felt a bit out of place when working alongside his younger co-stars. In a couple of scenes, Douglas also had a difficult time physically keeping up with Sutherland.
“I’ve got a bad knee, hamstring, so I’m trying to find – someone was commenting, ‘It’s so good to see somebody realistically stop when they’re out of breath,’” Douglas remembered in an interview with Movieweb. “I said, ‘I’m glad you liked that acting.’ Kiefer, he takes off, so I said, ‘Well, I’m going to pretend that I’m looking for some evidence or something.’ I asked him later, I said, ‘You’re really fast, Keifer.’ ‘Thanks,’ ‘Did you run in school.’ ‘Yeah, I have the State record for 400 meters.’ I said, ‘Oh, alright.’”
But Sutherland wasn’t the only one who impressed Douglas with their physicality. Longoria upstaged him as well.
“Now, Eva comes by me in high heels,” Douglas said. “And I’m thinking, ‘How can she run like that in these high heels?’”
Overall, Douglas enjoyed working alongside his co-stars, despite the slight blow to his pride.
“That was the most – I was humiliated,” he said.
Michael Douglas on why it was harder to get film roles as he got older
Douglas was asked if his age made it more challenging to get the film roles he wanted. Although he agreed it did, it wasn’t necessarily strictly because of his old age.
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“I would say probably harder, but a lot of that I think has to do with how much the business has changed, you know, the studios per se are small divisions of larger companies, so the mainline studio stuff you’re not going to see that much stuff,” he said. “You therefore have to, even if you’re not sure you want to, keep your production company going and developing things that you like.”
Still, Douglas has admitted to being occasionally surprised by the roles he’s offered that target his age-range. In The Kominsky Method, for instance, Douglas’ senior years is a primary focus of the film. This shocked him when he was given the script, as he initially didn’t think he related too much to the character.
“You get the script and say ‘they can’t possibly be thinking of me for this part,’” he once told People. “Then you look in the mirror and you go ‘oh yeah, I get it.’”
Why Michael Douglas has no plans to retire from acting
Douglas may be in his 70s now, but the Basic Instinct star doesn’t see himself giving up the acting bug anytime soon.
“Who would anticipate any other business that you can be in into your 70s and 80s and still work?” Douglas once said on a Netflix featurette about The Kominsky Method.
According to Yahoo, Douglas has even shared that he’s never appreciated acting more than in his old age.
“I was not an actor growing up, I had a lot of stage fright early in my career. I’m enjoying myself (now) more than I have,” he said.
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