Michael Douglas May Not Act Again

Michael Douglas hasn't appeared on the big screen since 2023's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and he recently told reporters his absence is intentional. The 80-year-old "realized I had to stop," he said during a press conference at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic this weekend, per USA Today and Variety. "I'd 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," he continued. Douglas, who has played Hank Pym in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2015, is not listed among the cast of the next Avengers movie.

But while he has "no real intentions" of returning to work, "I'm not retired, because if something special came up, I'd go back," he explained. "But otherwise, I'm quite happy. (I) just like to watch my wife work." That would be actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, to whom he's been married since 2000. "In the spirit of maintaining a good marriage," he joked, he's "happy to play the wife" for the time being. Douglas did appear on the small screen last year in an Apple TV+ miniseries about Benjamin Franklin, and he's set to star in the film Looking Through Water with his son Cameron Douglas, but that movie does not yet have a release date.