As his kids pursue acting, Michael Douglas calls the “nepo baby” label “snotty”

In a fresh interview with The Sunday Times, Michael Douglas didn’t tiptoe around the “nepo baby” conversation. The 82-year-old, son of screen icon Kirk Douglas and a two-time Oscar winner himself, said the label lands with a nasty edge and overlooks a basic truth: most parents help their kids get started.

“I really resented just even the idea. Snotty tone to it I really kind of resent”

He pushed the point further, noting the double standard he sees between Hollywood and other fields.

“In every other business, every mother and father helps their kids,”

Douglas argued that, outside entertainment, families are often expected to pass down a trade or match the success of a family firm — while actors get dinged for doing a version of the same thing. He also suggested that only a handful of so-called “nepos” can claim careers on the scale of his and his late father’s.

Zeta-Jones weighs in

Douglas’s wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones — they married in 2000 — echoed the sentiment in her own recent Sunday Times interview, calling the phrase “horrific” and “horrible.” She said their kids didn’t ask to be born into a public family and are building paths of their own; if they ever stopped loving the work, she and Douglas would be the first to nudge them toward something else.

Their kids’ next steps

• Dylan Michael Douglas, 26 — Graduated from Brown University in 2022 and appeared last year in the thriller I Will Come to You.
• Carys Zeta Douglas, 23 — Made her stage debut in July in an off-Broadway production of Chekhov’s The Seagull.

Douglas also has a memoir on the way, due October 6.