Troubled: Cameron Douglas with his superstar father MichaelAlthough he did everything in his power to avert that terrible moment, Michael Douglas had completely expected that his son Cameron would be sentenced to a jail term on Tuesday.
And the knowledge that it would be his duty, as a father, to witness the sentencing, had troubled him for months.
Has he ever looked older than he did on the court's steps in New York? His face was nearly as grey as his pale £5,000 Armani suit and for once he looked every one of his 65 years.
You could see the hard lines of disappointment etched around his mouth.
As Michael had feared, his son Cameron was sent down for five years. He admitted to conspiring to distribute drugs, after $18,000 of crystal methamphetamine was found in his hotel room in July 2009.
Cameron, 31, had been warned that he could be jailed for up to a decade - hence the letters pleading leniency which came from his father Michael, his stepmother Catherine Zeta-Jones, his grandfather Kirk and his mother Diandra.
The family understood that - despite attempts at rehabilitation and spells of 'tough love' - Cameron had blown all his chances, but were still desperate to see the sentence reduced.
It transpires that Cameron, who started dealing drugs after being cut off from the family fortune, has been addicted to heroin for several years. Indeed, his girlfriend Kelly Sott was caught trying to smuggle the drug into prison for him in the handle of a battery-operated toothbrush last summer.
Michael now admits that his son has been taking one drug or another ever since he was 13 years old.
The two-hour visits which he has had with his son since Cameron was taken into custody have been his first chance to get to know his eldest son as a drug-free adult.
It's a shocking admission. Michael blames himself for having been an absent and volatile father. He even blames his son's addiction on the Douglas gene pool - the idea is that addiction runs in the family like the famous dimpled chin.
There may be something in this theory: Michael went through rehab for alcohol addiction and his half-brother Eric died in 2004 of an overdose.
Michael wrote in a letter to the court: 'Cameron is an adult and responsible for his own actions. We do know, however, that genes, family and peer pressure are a strong influence on a substance abuser.'
Family ties: Cameron's grandfather, Kirk Douglas, left, and his mother, Diandra, both sent letters to the court pleading for leniencyCameron must have understood the destructive power of drugs - he was even a pallbearer at Eric's funeral. Michael has hoped for years that his son would manage to kick drugs. A decade ago he boasted that Cameron's new stepmother Catherine Zeta-Jones had 'tamed' his son.
Cameron himself declared in February last year that he was finally drug free. 'I'm in the best place I've ever been. It's taken me some time, but I've finally got there,' he said.
Five months later came the drugs bust. So what went wrong?
Cameron Morrell Douglas was born on December 13, 1978. At the time, Michael had just won an Oscar for producing the film One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. He was well-known as a television actor, but struggling in the shadow of his famous father Kirk Douglas.
Cameron's mother Diandra was the wealthy daughter of a diplomat. She was suspicious of the film business, but watched as, while his son was still a little boy, her husband became a bona fide star.
When Cameron was nine, his father's career was transformed by Fatal Attraction and Wall Street - the biggest films of 1987. They were followed by more successes, including Basic Instinct.
But as his fame grew, the marriage began to disintegrate. 'Fatherhood, in the past, for me was more about guilt than enjoyment - and you pay the consequences,' Michael said last year. 'I mean, that's basically it - the fact that you weren't there and you missed things.'
In 1992, Michael went into rehab, prompting the rumour that he was there for sex addiction. 'I did have addiction problems, but someone came up with this sex addiction thing and that's been carried along for years, despite being totally untrue,' he has commented.
The stepmother: Catherine Zeta-Jones in New York earlier this weekThe volatile atmosphere seems to have affected Cameron - a troubled teenager who turned into an addicted young man. As Michael wrote to the judge last week: 'Cameron grew up a single child in a bad marriage. Cameron found his family in the gang mentality.'
In 1995, when Cameron was 17, his parents began the process of divorcing and he went off the rails, dropping out of school and becoming a DJ. He said last year: 'Drugs and partying were part of that scene. I don't regret anything I did because I learned a lot.
'I was hanging out with people who didn't care who my father was.'
When he was 18, he ran into a car at a red light, which shunted into a car being driven by a secret service agent.
When he and the agent got into an argument, he drove off with the man hanging on to the car, before crashing into a fountain. He served four months in a juvenile prison.
When he was 19, he entered the Betty Ford rehab clinic, and spent eight months being treated there.
By the time Cameron reached his 20s, Michael had started dating Catherine Zeta-Jones. As Cameron struggled, his father was occupied with being a father to Dylan and Carys, his half-brother and half-sister.
It's fair to say that Michael made some effort to reach out to his older boy - Cameron was best man at his wedding and Catherine attempted to bring him into the family. But his destructive habits persisted.
Not long after the wedding, he was evicted from his flat in New York.
Michael tried to take him in hand, first by giving him a role in a movie It Runs In The Family, which starred him and Kirk. But Cameron didn't capitalise on the push it gave to his movie career. Instead, he was smitten by the DJ lifestyle and the drugs that went with it.
Finally, his father's patience wore out. In 2006, Michael Douglas took the decision to cut Cameron off from the family millions in the hope that this might bring him to his senses. Two years ago, there was something of a rapprochement after which father and son spoke about the past.
'He was the best father he could be to me,' Cameron said.
'But he was frequently away. I've talked about it to my father and Catherine and I know Dad feels some guilt about it. But I bear no ill will towards him.
Cursed family: Michael Douglas's half-brother Eric (pictured, left, with Kirk) died in 2004 from a drug overdose'He did what he did because he wanted to make his own way in the world. I respect him for that.'
How crushing for Michael Douglas to realise that he had not been able to help his son. Sources in New York, where he and Catherine are now living, say the strain which it has put on their ten-year marriage is said to be considerable.
Shia LaBeouf, his co-star on the new Wall Street sequel, said: 'Michael was an open wound on the set. It was unbelievably disturbing. I met a broken man, not Michael Douglas.'
But this week, Douglas spoke of a new-found pride in his son. 'He's sober. I get to witness the wonderful young man he can be. He blames no one but himself,' he said.
He adds that Cameron is a 'tough kid'. He will need to be.
What, you wonder, will their relationship be like when father and son are finally properly reunited in five years' time?
source: dailymail
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