Michael Douglas blames social media for American actors losing movie roles

Michael Douglas wants young, up-and-coming American actors to step away from their social media accounts and start getting sexier.

Americans are losing roles to their British and Australian counterparts, Douglas said in an interview with Britain’s Independent, and the actor blamed this “crisis” on U.S. actors spending too much time getting caught up in their image and not enough time honing their craft.

“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,” Douglas said. “Many actors are getting caught up in this image thing which is going on to affect their range.”

Douglas’s remarks echo what he told EW back in February: “We have a little crisis going on amongst our young actors at this point,” he said then. “The issue I hear from casting agents is that young American actors now are very self-conscious of their image. So rather than playing truthful and themselves—it might be because of so much cable, so much stuff on the internet—they’re almost kind of capturing an image of what they think they should be, rather than playing it.”

In his chat with the Independent, Douglas also called America’s current crop of stars not masculine enough for many movie roles.

“With the Aussies, particularly with the males, it’s the masculinity. In the U.S. 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,” he said. “It’s a phenomena.”

Douglas stars in Marvel’s Ant-Man, which opens in theaters July 17. Head to The Independent to read his full interview.