Performer and social activist Shirley Douglas is congratulated by her son and actor Kiefer Sutherland after she was invested as Officer to the Order of Canada in Ottawa, Friday October 24, 2003. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand

TORONTO - Actress and activist Shirley Douglas admits she was away from home for lengthy periods of time to pursue the stage and screen and it was hard on her children, including "24" star Kiefer Sutherland.

But she knew it would make her a better mother in the end, said Douglas, 75, in an interview Monday before being honoured at the Women in Film & Television's 2009 Crystal Awards.

"Our jobs, we move around a great deal ... and that is the reality that my children grew up with - is being left, and not happily," she said.

"You either have to decide you're going to be guilty about it and not do it, or that you are going to do it and that you will be, in the end - and I hate to use it as an excuse - but that you'll be a better mother than being home bitter that you aren't allowed out.

"My children have been extremely generous ... and they would be the first to refuse to say that it bothered them in any way - but it has."

In giving Douglas its International Achievement Award, the Women in Film & Television's Toronto chapter praised her for doing what she loves while remaining true to her convictions and raising a family, which also includes son Thomas and daughter Rachel (Kiefer's twin).

Those convictions have drawn her to a variety of causes, including the American Civil Rights Movement and the fight to save medicare, pioneered by her father, the late Tommy Douglas.

She also supported the Black Panthers, which led to her 1969 arrest in Los Angeles on conspiracy charges of possessing unregistered explosives. The courts eventually dismissed the case and exonerated her.

Douglas said she never worried whether standing up for what she believed in - even in the days of the so-called Hollywood blacklist - would hurt her acting career.

"I think to live your life you have to live it, and if you see something that offends you morally or any other way you have to follow that and take it up," said the Toronto resident, who was once married to actor Donald Sutherland and holds the Order of Canada.

Douglas said she also had support from many fellow actors and filmmakers in maintaining her moral ground, including some who were denied employment because of their beliefs in the 1950s.

"I know a lot of McCarthyite victims," she said. "It was hard for them but really they had no choice. And when you have no choice and you see something, it's like if you see a child going to be run over by a car - you grab the child.

"And for me, many things that I see wrong are as obvious as grabbing a child and so what else would you do?"

Douglas acted in England for many years before moving back to Canada, working with famed directors including Stanley Kubrick ("Lolita") and David Cronenberg ("Dead Ringers").

When she had to leave home for weeks at a time, she would hire a nanny.

Eventually, she put her children in boarding school "because their lives would be the same every day whether I was there or not," she said.

"Taking me out of the house left a terrible hole in the house," she added.

"But when they went to boarding school, they found a real life of their own and it didn't change ... so I think that worked out fairly well."