I was a late bloomer: Michael Douglas on his Hollywood career

Growing up in his father, the great Kirk Douglas' shadow, Hollywood veteran Michael Douglas says acting was not on his mind but he ended up in the profession on a whim.

Speaking at the HT Leadership Summit, where he was joined by wife Catherine Zeta-Jones, the 75-year-old actor said acting was a last minute career decision for him.

"I was a late bloomer in becoming an actor. It was not some passion I had. It was probably the rejection to my father and the fact he was gone a lot... So I was not one of those who always wanted to be an actor," Douglas said.

It was during college that the actor decided to venture into doing theatre, which he said was just a whim.

"I was in college and I was undeclared. I didn't had a major. This was in the 1960s and I guess you can call me a hippie. It was in the final year of that they said you have to declare a major. So I was like, 'Okay man! I'll do theatre.'
"So, for me, it didn't come for 20 years. After I won an Oscar for 'Wall Street', I finally felt that the Oscar part was more important for me than for the other people. I felt like I have stepped out of my father's shadow and have created my own identity."
"I was out of college and was beginning to work. I had read this book and I told him, 'Let me get it together dad! Just give me a chance and run with it for a little while.' After a couple of years, I was able to get the picture made. After that, he looked at me with a whole new look in his eyes."
"For me, it was going to London for the theatre. I wanted to be on the stage in any capacity. My first professional engagement was when I was nine years old in the professional theatre at West End in London."
"I had this fearlessness about ambition. As you get older that gets diminishes as you got more to lose. You wonder what people think, sometimes as a woman in any industry, the word ambition is something you are not supposed to say but I'm ambitious and I still am. "