Michael Douglas on collecting and knowing when to stop

I wanted to open up my horizons with a genre I hadn’t tried before, and prove to myself that I can reinvent myself. My son, Dylan, is a huge Marvel fan and I imagine that on some subconscious level, that must have weighed in the balance, too. Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito are old friends of mine, and I was jealous of their experience playing the Joker and the Penguin, so I was really happy when I was asked. This was the first time I’d done a green-screen movie, and it was great fun getting into the superhero world.

Absolutely! It was $85 for a part in an off-Broadway show. I got my first movie paycheque from Steve McQueen. He was the producer of “Adam at Six A.M”, directed by Robert Scheerer. That was back in 1970 and I earned $3,400 for the whole movie. The cherry on the cake was that I got to drive a tangerine orange Porsche. What an amazing car! Not exactly low-key but incredible acceleration. When we finished filming, Steve tossed me the keys. He said, “You were great kid, it’s all yours.” As rewards go, it doesn’t get any better! Because I’m a stickler for detail, I went looking for a watch to go with it. It was a Rolex, if I remember correctly. I had the store swap the original steel bracelet for a fake leather orange strap. My God, did that clash! Thinking about it now, it was the height of bad taste.

Art. You probably know I produced “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” with Jack Nicholson. It made a lot of money at the box office, and the first thing I bought with it was a German Expressionist painting. After that, I became interested in the Hudson River School, an American turn-of-the-century movement that was founded by a group of landscape painters who were influenced by Romanticism. For years, Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran were my favourite painters. Then one day, while I was admiring a painting, I happened to glance out the window at the beautiful view. Seeing this real-life country landscape got me buying land, then property. I invested in land and houses for a very long time, to the point where it was starting to get out of hand. That’s when I knew I had to stop. I own a farm in Majorca that’s for sale. I can arrange a visit tomorrow, if you’re interested! (laughs).

Yes, if they’re vintage and “give off” something. I like watches that don’t eat up your entire wrist. You know, the ones that look like you’ve strapped the mantlepiece clock to your arm. I prefer something more discreet, which wasn’t necessarily the case when I was younger. I used to buy watches as a way of saying, look at me, I’m successful. You get the producers smoking their big, fat cigars. Me, it was watches. I had boxes full of watches of every size by every maker. Then one day it all seemed rather vulgar and again, I started to tone it down.

It’s a mystery. Every morning, the traders who’d been hired as extras for the movie would be on the floor shouting “Gekko, you’re the greatest, you’re our God!” It was like being a rock star. Objectively, Gekko was a villain. Audiences should have hated him. He ruined thousands of people, put companies out of business, was involved in dodgy dealings, yet the public never held it against him. And you know why? Because he wears designer suits, lives in a penthouse and drives a fast car. A bit like Madoff. As crazy as it sounds, you’re more likely to hand over your life savings to a trader who spends thousands of dollars on luxury watches than to a guy who checks the time on his phone.

I’ve never been an astute businessman, in fact a few years ago, like a lot of others I pretty much lost the shirt off my back. Imagine 40% of your savings going up in smoke in the space of two months. So I’m hardly the person to be giving investment advice. When I was making the first “Wall Street”, some friends asked me where they should invest on the stock market, and I replied, “Would it cross your mind to ask a guy who’s playing a serial killer what kind of gun he uses to shoot his victims?” I’ve noticed women are never involved in trading scandals. Does this mean greed is a specifically masculine trait? Since making “Wall Street”, I’ve realised that investing on the stock market can be a lot of smoke and mirrors. These days, I’m especially cautious about buying shares. On the other hand, I’ve read some fascinating articles about watch collectors. These are guys who are so crazy about beautiful watches they’re prepared to put every penny they have into a limited edition. Then when they put them back on the market a few years later, prices go sky-high. That doesn’t surprise me. These watches are so fabulous, so rare, they become works of art.

How tiny the mechanisms are. You look at certain watches and wonder how it could ever be possible to do better, to make something even more microscopic, then you hear that thanks to technology and new techniques, another record has been broken. While I admire this kind of achievement, I still believe a watch should have a clearly distinguishable dial. No-one wants to have to pull out a magnifying glass to see the time!

Whenever I come across one of my first films on TV, I’m not surprised I became a star, I’m surprised anyone ever put me in front of a camera! (laughs).

I buy watches! No, seriously, I play golf. I enjoy travel too, but in small doses whereas there’s no such thing as too much golf. I’ve tried to get my wife [Catherine Zeta-Jones] onto the green, but she’s not stuck on the idea. I’m curious about sailing catamarans, but again I think I’ll have a hard time convincing Catherine!