Carys Zeta Douglas Dishes On Pressures Of Coming From The ‘Douglas Dynasty,’ Making A Name For Herself

She may only be 15-years-old but Carys Zeta Douglas is already starting to follow in the footsteps of her famous parents.

Recently, Carys sat down for a rare interview, speaking to Town and Country Magazine about growing up in a such a prestigious family of actors. Not only is her father actor Michael Douglas, but her grandfather is the legendary Kirk Douglas. Then there’s her mother, Catherine Zeta-Jones, who won an Oscar for her role in the film Chicago. It’s definitely not a bad family to be born into, but Carys claims that sometimes being part of such a well-known family has its drawbacks.

“When I was younger I didn’t like the idea of having his name attached, this kind of ‘Douglas Dynasty’ stuff,” Carys says. “I think what bothers me the most is that people think I don’t work hard for it, that I don’t need to work hard for it. That anything I do gets handed to me. When, honestly, I feel like it’s the opposite. I feel I need to constantly prove myself to people – that I am not just my parents’ daughter.”

However, growing up with such famous parents didn’t really strike Carys right away. At first, the teen says that she thought her dad possessed a job that was a far cry from that of acting.

“I thought my dad was a pancake maker. I didn’t know he was an actor, honestly,” she says.

But as she grew, she started to realize the price that came along with being born into such a famous family, frequently having run-ins with the paparazzi.

“I used to get really upset. They [paparazzi] would jump on the subway and sit right in front of me. I was like, six. I was confused,” Douglas admits. “That’s when I knew, ‘If this is going to be what it’s like, I need to focus on who I really am, and this is going to be something that’s just going to happen, and I can’t do anything about it.'”

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But if there’s one thing that her mother, Catherine, is most proud of, it’s the important lesson of manners that she instilled in her daughter Carys and her 18-year-old son, Dylan Douglas. Zeta-Jones say that she’s very, very proud of this.

“There’s nothing worse than a privileged kid without manners. I drilled it into them like boot camp. The teenage years… She knows she cannot roll her eyes at me, or huff and puff around me. I never did it to my mother, and she’s not doing it to me.”

Carys says that she dreams of going to an Ivy league school or possibly becoming a doctor, but at the end of the day, her real passion is for acting. But she’s not in a rush to get there right away. Currently, the 15-year-old attends fashion shows and movie premieres with her mother from time to time — but now, she’s content with going to school and being a teenager.