Michael Douglas has pushed back against the term “nepo baby”, in a discussion over his famous parentage.
The Basic Instinct star, 80, is the son of the late Paths of Glory star Kirk Douglas, and actor Diana Dill. His own son, Cameron Douglas, is also an actor, and appeared alongside him in the 2003 film It Runs in the Family.
The term“nepo baby”, short for “nepotism baby”, is often used to derrogotarily describe children of celebrities whose careers are seen to benefit from their parents’ fame.
Speaking at the Red Sea Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Friday (6 December), Douglas hit back at being called a “Hollywood nepo baby”.
“I don’t know a father in whatever business, be it a plumber or a contractor or a carpenter, who doesn’t try to help his son join him,” Douglas told the audience. “I’m a nepo baby too, you know? So that’s the way it goes,” he added.
Despite an initial reluctance to follow in his father’s footsteps, Douglas made headway in Hollywood when he worked as an executive producer on the Oscar-winning 1975 Ken Kesey adaptation One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
“I sort of impulsively said, ‘Let me run with it,’” Douglas recalled, with Kirk supporting the move.
“There’s a risk factor that also gives you the nerves when you’re starting a project. But then the nerves are just part of your career, part of your work,” he added.
For his work as a producer on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Douglas received his first Academy Award (for Best Picture).
He would later win a Best Actor Oscar for his role in the 1988 drama Wall Street.
Earlier this year, Douglas learned that he is a distant relative of the actor Scarlett Johansson. Both actors star in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Johansson playing Black Widow, and Douglas playing Ant-Man’s Hank Pym.
“Your DNA cousin is the actress Scarlett Johansson,” presenter Henry Louis Gates told the star on the geneology series Finding Your Roots.
Gates added: “Michael and Scarlett share identical stretches of DNA on four different chromosomes, all of which appear on Scarlett’s maternal lines, which stretch back to Jewish communities in eastern Europe.”
Visibly surprised, Douglas said: “Are you kidding? Oh, that’s amazing. Alright, this is cool. This is so cool. That’s incredible.”
