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.'”

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.