Michael Douglas opens up on his 'pretty dark' year

Michael Douglas has opened up. Photo / AFP

Michael Douglas's heart was broken when he was diagnosed with cancer in the same year as his son was given a jail sentence.

The 71-year-old actor discovered he had stage four throat cancer in the summer of 2010, just months after his son Cameron, 30, was sentenced to five years in prison for heroin possession.

Michael Douglas and his son Cameron. Photo / AFP

It made the year very difficult to cope with, Douglas told Megyn Kelly in an interview on Tuesday.

"That was a one-two shot, that was a pretty dark moment," he said. "My oldest son Cameron has struggled with addiction for most of his life, he was a serious heroin addict, that brought him into federal prison.

"It broke my heart, the combination. When he was sentenced, I knew the amount of time he was going to be spending in federal prison combined with my early cancer at the same time."

After serving three years in jail, Cameron's sentence was extended to 10 years when he was found to have drugs in his cell. He was also put in solitary confinement from 2012 to 2014.

Another tough time in the actor's life came when he and Catherine Zeta-Jones split briefly in 2012. But the pair have moved on from that situation, and Douglas told Kelly that he loves his wife "more and more every day".

- AAP