Speaking to CBS, Douglas said that grew up in a broken home after his father, Kirk Douglas, divorced his mother, leaving him in New York while his father worked in Los Angeles.
“Judging from being out here, living in LA as the children of successful actors or well-known people is rough.
“I have consciously most of my life lived either in Santa Barbara after I went to school here for a while, or back east in New York City or New York state. I just think it’s easier to raise kids – rather than being just totally overwhelmed by showbiz, which is what happens for a lot of people when they’re living in Los Angeles. It’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It’s very hard to get out of that little bubble.
“I mean a lot of it has to do with the choices. Like my mother remarried and my stepfather, Bill Darrid who Kirk was the first one to call my surrogate father, was a lovely, lovely man and a great listener. And I just think it was an environment that we were nurtured my brother and I, and really loved and appreciated them.
“So the interesting thing I always get, because we always get this thing called Hollywood royalty, and my folks got divorced very, very early on in my father’s career. He was just beginning his acting career per se when we moved back to New York, it wasn’t any fancy apartment. He was facing a back alley. And so we lived middle class at best.”
But Douglas said eventually his once-broken family flourished.
“The other beauty of the fact was that my stepfather, Bill, and Kirk, and my stepmother Ann and my mother Diana, were the best of friends. They got along great. And so I think also for me, the idea of stepparents was very positive because both my parents were happy.
“And I think so many times we hear about these wicked stepmothers and stepfathers, when the reality is that there’s a lot of wonderful stepparents out there who out of their love for their partner except these children from another marriage. And I wish we’d hear more about the good stepparent stories rather than the ones that are not. “
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