With acting his true love, the lesson that Douglas would like to learn at this phase of his career has to do with allowing himself to be "creatively selfish," to think a little bit more like an actor and a little bit less like a producer.
"I tend to think in terms of the movie as a whole, first. I want to make good movies, which, as an actor, I'll be a part of. But sometimes I cut myself short as far as an actor is concerned. I don't get a chance to be as selfish as I want to be because I'm always trying to make it work for everybody else. While a writer is alone with their word processor, or a painter is alone in a studio, or a musician is working on a song, movie making is a big kind of collaborative family. Certainly it starts with the written word, but then it becomes a collaborative art and that process never ceases to amaze me. It's almost mystical. It's something that is really alive and fresh.
"I think for me, my success was in two very distinct phases. One was obviously producing Cuckoo's Nest, and the other – winning an Oscar at 31. Unlike an average profession, acting usually comes in concentrated doses. When you're an actor, it's anywhere from two and a half to five months of intense work and then it's done. That's the hardest part of filmmaking. There is no audience response, so you really don't get any immediate satisfaction," says Douglas.
