Michael Douglas is urging the photographers who got rich from their "macabre" photographs of him during his 2010 throat cancer battle to give some of the cash they made to charity.
The movie star admits it became a chore to face the paparazzi as he tried to battle his health crisis in private, and he fears their shots may have been "toughed up" to make him look more gaunt and sick than he really was.
Douglas admits the photos that appeared in the tabloids worried friends and prompted his father Kirk Douglas to jet to New York from Los Angeles - and now he thinks it's payback time.
In a new Today and Dateline NBC TV interview, the latest celebrity cancer survivor says, "They're (paparazzi) there every day. I guess curiosity's gotten them a lot of coverage... and there's so many outlets now these days.
"There was sort of a macabre enjoyment out of sort of watching me go down there for a while, I felt, by the paparazzi... You want to share (and) give 25 per cent to the United Nations or my favourite charity, you know? Cancer research?
"Why (do they) have the right to take your own identity, 100 per cent selfishly for your own gains?"
The constant scrutiny gave Douglas a taste of what it must be like for today's hot young stars who are never out of the tabloids.
He adds, "I just feel for all these young kids. I mean, the generations now, with the amount of paparazzi that they have and these video cameras... you just can't do anything."