When I was born, my father, Kirk, was 28, my mother, Diana, only 21. When I was barely two, my father decided he’d had enough of playing not particularly memorable parts in Broadway plays and took off on his own for Hollywood in pursuit of fame and fortune.
Whichever way you cut it, Kirk was a man who cast – who still casts, aged 99 – an extremely long shadow. He was, and is, incredibly dynamic, larger than life, sometimes aggressive, a very masculine man who loved women. As my mother quickly discovered. Within 18 months of him being in California, she had seen and read enough to call time on the marriage. They divorced when I was seven and my younger brother, Joel, four.
A lot of marriages hang on too long for the sake of the children. But, if you start asking questions when they are older, those children will often tell you that you could have cut the tension with a knife when their parents were together and that divorce was rather like letting the air out of a balloon.
Even at that young age, I knew they weren’t right for each other. He was a Russian Jew peasant. She was a sophisticated woman, an Anglican from a well-off Bermudian family. But you know what they say: opposites attract. She was very beautiful. He was in the navy during the war and came across a copy of Life magazine one day and there was my mother on the cover. They had already met at drama school and he decided he would marry her. She clearly had a penchant for bad boys so there was an animal attraction. But they were mismatched.
I adored my mother, whom we lost last year at the age of 92. She struggled as a single mum, working in soap operas and on and off Broadway. Then she made a wonderful choice in her next husband, a lovely man, another actor, called Bill Darrid. They married when I was 12. We lived in a small farmhouse in Connecticut, not 20 miles from where I live today.
Bill was an extraordinary guy, the most important male influence through my teenage years. To his credit, Kirk always referred to him as my surrogate father. Step-parents often get a bad press. But it isn’t always true. This was a man who took on the responsibility of raising another man’s children, and that included answering questions about the birds and the bees.
Dad’s second wife, Anne, is still alive and theirs has been a good marriage – lasting now for more than 60 years. She’s a wonderful woman, the opposite of a wicked stepmother, who has been an integral part of my life all that time.
Joel and I would go off to Hollywood to see Dad during the holidays, and we had some great times. We would visit him on set. I had my 16th birthday in Los Angeles. Hayley Mills was my date. Or we would go to Kirk’s house in Palm Springs where Joel and I became the Desert Rats, riding horses out into the countryside. People such as Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra and Tony Curtis would drop by. All of that left a lasting impression although, looking back, I can see that Dad was film star first, father second. We were much more emotionally attached to our stepfather.
Like Kirk before me, I was too absent from my first marriage. Second time round, I’m so much more hands-on. By the time Dylan and then Carys were born, I was well ensconced in my career. They both want to be actors and Catherine [Zeta-Jones] and I have seen enough of them on stage to know they have got it. You’ll be hearing from another generation of Douglases. I’ve no doubt about it.
• Tickets for An Evening with Michael Douglas at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane on Sunday 30 October are available at rutlive.co.uk or on 0844 412 4657
