I’ve beaten cancer, says Douglas

(REX)

“I’ve got it beat,” the actor Michael Douglas told NBC’s Matt Lauer, in his first television interview since having weeks of chemotherapy and radiation treatment in the autumn for throat cancer.

Asked how the illness has changed his life, the 66-year old said: “You’re a little more conscious of your time in how you choose to spend it.”

Lauer asked Douglas about putting on weight after radiation treatments, and Douglas said he had been "eating like a pig." He is working out in a gym and even planning for an upcoming film role as famed pianist Liberace, he said.

"I think the odds are, with the tumor gone and what I know about this particular type of cancer, that I've got it beat," Douglas told Lauer.

Douglas, 66, made a surprise announcement in August that doctors had diagnosed him with stage IV throat cancer but he was optimistic he would recover. Given the late stage of the tumor, however, many fans were concerned.

In the months since, Douglas has only sporadically appeared in the media and has been seen most often in paparazzi pictures walking the streets of New York with family members.

On "Today," Douglas told Lauer he had lost 32 pounds during treatment, but had recently added back 12 pounds. He said he had lost a lot of muscle mass and that radiation treatment caused his salivary ducts to stop functioning for a time.

Douglas is one of Hollywood's brightest stars, having worked in movies from "The China Syndrome" to "Fatal Attraction," "The American President" and "Wall Street," which earned him an Oscar for his role as money manipulator Gordon Gekko.

He also won an Oscar for producing "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and in the 1970's starred in TV crime show "The Streets of San Francisco." He is the son of veteran actor Kirk Douglas and is married to Catherine Zeta-Jones, with whom he has two children.