Quotes from Michael Douglas

I've been dying to do a Marvel picture for so long.

Actors, I have to say, most of the time, they elevate things; they don't screw things up most of the time.

My own parents divorced when I was six. I was raised with my brother Joel by our mother on the East Coast, visiting my father in Los Angeles during holidays. When your parents are divorced, you don't know anything else, do you?

Kids know. They know everything. I would err on the side of pretty much sharing everything.

Paul Rudd is ripped.

Most of the stories I read are about my Hollywood pedigree.

Do you know what absolute happiness is? For me, it is to wake up my kids in the morning - these little pieces of innocence - to wake them and find they're so happy to see me! It is unequivocal love, no question about it.

Liberace was one of the biggest stars in America. He was a kind of a phenomenon.

When you're making pictures out of heartfelt passion, it hurts when someone calls them a calculated business move.

'Five Easy Pieces,' 'Easy Rider' - those are indie pictures; those were not studio pictures. They had relationships with studio distribution, but they were indies.

In 'Wall Street,' Charlie Sheen carried that movie.

'Wall Street' was a very important movie for me in terms of my career. I won an Oscar, and then the film 'Fatal Attraction' came right after it.

The people who work in Wall Street still look up to Gordon Gekko. He's sort of a guru.

In the movie 'Wall Street' I play Gordon Gekko, a greedy corporate executive who cheated to profit while innocent investors lost their savings. The movie was fiction, but the problem is real.

With 'Black Rain,' I spent a lot of time with homicide detectives, and I spent a lot of time with different brokers on 'Wall Street.' It helps get the rhythm of the piece and the tone, and how overplayed or underplayed it might be. That's also the magic of movies: You get to hang out and live these different lives.

Serious is when they tell you, 'You've got cancer.' Cancer is serious, but then the rest of it is not.

The thing with cancer is that you want to get it as early as you can.

The arts are a celebration of life.

Celebrity gets you access to world leaders.

What's worth doing is worth doing for money.

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies and cuts through to the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Money itself isn't lost or made. It's simply transferred from one perception to another.

Never knew how poor I was until I started making money.

Money never sleeps, pal