Michael Douglas says American actors are too 'social media image conscious'

In the upcoming "Ant-Man," Michael Douglas proves that at 70-years-old he can still play a convincing tough guy. But he can't say the same for the contemporary male American actor.

In an interview with The Independent, Douglas said that actors in Britain and Australia are "taking many of the best American roles from them."

"In Britain they take their training seriously while in the States we're going through a sort of social media image conscious thing rather than formal training," he told The Independent. "Many actors are getting caught up in this image thing which is going on to affect their range."

And Douglas wasn't done.

"With the Aussies, particularly with the males it's the masculinity. In the US we have this relatively asexual or unisex area with sensitive young men and we don't have many Channing Tatums or Chris Pratts, while the Aussies do. It's a phenomena."

Douglas knows a thing or two about playing characters with masculinity.

In his hey-day of the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was known best for playing hard-nosed characters like the shrewd Wall Street trader Gordon Gekko in "Wall Street" and police detective Nick Curran in the sexually-charged "Basic Instinct."

Douglas' comments come on the heels of Dustin Hoffman's criticism of Hollywood earlier this week in which he said he believes the current state of movies is "the worst that film has ever been."