Michael Douglas
Michael Kirk Douglas is an American retired actor and film producer. He has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the AFI Life Achievement Award.
The elder son of Kirk Douglas and Diana Dill, Douglas earned his Bachelor of Arts in drama from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He produced One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, having acquired the rights to the novel from his father and later earned the Academy Award for Best Picture as a producer. Douglas won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street, a role which he reprised in the sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Other notable roles include in The China Syndrome, Romancing the Stone, The Jewel of the Nile, Fatal Attraction, The War of the Roses, Basic Instinct, Falling Down, The American President, The Game, Traffic, Wonder Boys, and Solitary Man.
On television, he started his career earning three consecutive Emmy Award nominations for playing a homicide inspector in the ABC police procedural series The Streets of San Francisco. He won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for portraying Liberace in the HBO film Behind the Candelabra, and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy for playing an aging acting coach in the Netflix comedy series The Kominsky Method. He played Benjamin Franklin in the Apple TV+ miniseries Franklin. From 2015 to 2023, He portrayed Hank Pym in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He announced his retirement from acting in 2025, citing his age and desire to spend more time with his family as being the deciding factors for him.
Douglas has received notice for his humanitarian and political activism. He sits on the board of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, is an honorary board member of the anti-war grant-making foundation Ploughshares Fund and he was appointed as a United Nations Messenger of Peace in 1998. He has been married to actress Catherine Zeta-Jones since 2000.
Early life and education
Douglas was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the first child of actors Kirk Douglas and Diana Dill. His parents met at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.His father was Jewish and was born Issur Danielovitch. Michael's paternal grandparents were emigrants from Chavusy in the Russian Empire. His mother was from Devonshire Parish, Bermuda, and had English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, French, Belgian, and Dutch ancestry. Douglas's uncle was politician Sir Nicholas Bayard Dill, and Douglas's maternal grandfather, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Melville Dill, served as Attorney General of Bermuda, as a Member of the Parliament of Bermuda, and as commanding officer of the Bermuda Militia Artillery. Douglas is a US citizen by birth in the United States and has Bermudian Status from his mother's birth in Bermuda.
His great-grandfather, Thomas Newbold Dill, was a merchant, an MCP for Devonshire Parish from 1868 to 1888, a member of the legislative council and an assistant justice from 1888, mayor of the City of Hamilton from 1891 to 1897, served on numerous committees and boards, and was a member of the Devonshire Church and Devonshire Parish vestries. Thomas Newbold Dill's father, another Thomas Melville Dill, was a sea captain who took the Bermudian-built barque Sir George F. Seymour from Bermuda to Ireland in thirteen days in March 1858, but lost his master's certificate after the wreck of the Bermudian-built Cedrine on the Isle of Wight while returning the last convict laborers from the Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda to Britain in 1863. The current Bishop of Bermuda, the Right Reverend Nicholas Dill, is a cousin of Michael Douglas.
Douglas has a younger brother, Joel Douglas, and two paternal half-brothers, Peter Douglas and Eric Douglas, from stepmother Anne Buydens.
Douglas attended The Allen-Stevenson School in New York City, Eaglebrook School in Deerfield, Massachusetts, and The Choate Preparatory School in Wallingford, Connecticut. He received his B.A. in dramatic art from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1968, where he was also the honorary president of the UCSB Alumni Association. He studied acting with Wynn Handman at The American Place Theatre in New York City.
Career
1969–1979: Early years
Douglas started his film career in the late 1960s and early 1970s, appearing in little known films such as Hail, Hero!, Adam at 6 A.M., and Summertree. His performance in Hail, Hero! earned him a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Male Newcomer. On November 24, 1969, Douglas formed his first independent film production company, Bigstick Productions, Limited.His first TV breakthrough role came with a 1969 CBS Playhouse special, The Experiment—and it was the only time he was billed as "M.K. Douglas". His first significant role came in the TV series The Streets of San Francisco from 1972 to 1976, in which he starred alongside Karl Malden. Douglas later said that Malden became a "mentor" and someone he "admired and loved deeply". After Douglas left the show, he had a long association with his mentor until Malden's death on July 1, 2009. In 2004, Douglas presented Malden with the Monte Cristo Award of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut for the Lifetime Achievement Award.
In late 1971, Douglas received from his father, Kirk, the rights to the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which had been purchased by Bryna Productions in February 1962. Michael went on to produce the film of the same name with Saul Zaentz. Kirk hoped to portray Randle McMurphy himself, having starred in an earlier stage version, but the director, Miloš Forman, went with Jack Nicholson, who won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Douglas won the Academy Award for Best Picture for producing the film. In December 1976, Michael and his brother Peter became head of their father's film production company, The Bryna Company, though Michael would depart by 1978 to focus exclusively on producing through his own Bigstick Productions.
After leaving The Streets of San Francisco in 1976, Douglas played a hospital doctor in the medical thriller Coma, and in 1979 he played the role of a troubled marathon runner in Running. In 1979, he both produced and starred in The China Syndrome, a dramatic film co-starring Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon about a nuclear power plant accident. The film was considered "one of the most intelligent Hollywood films of the 1970s". In June 1979, Douglas appointed Jack Brodsky as executive vice-president of Bigstick Productions.
1980–2000: Success in Hollywood
Douglas's acting career was propelled to fame when he produced and starred in the 1984 romantic adventure comedy Romancing the Stone. It also reintroduced Douglas as a capable leading man, giving director Robert Zemeckis his first box-office success. The film also starred Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito, a friend of Douglas's with whom he had shared an apartment in the 1960s. It was followed a year later by a sequel, The Jewel of the Nile, which he also produced. Bigstick Productions was then partnered with Mercury Entertainment, a company backed by producer Michael Phillips in 1986 to produce independently financed features. In the 1980s, Douglas formed a new film production company, The Stone Group with partner Rick Bieber.In 1987, Douglas starred in the thriller Fatal Attraction with Glenn Close. That same year he played tycoon Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street for which he received an Academy Award as Best Actor. He reprised his role as Gekko in the sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps in 2010, also directed by Stone.
Douglas starred in the 1989 film The War of the Roses, which also starred Turner and DeVito. In 1989 he starred in Ridley Scott's international police crime drama Black Rain opposite Andy García and Kate Capshaw; the film was shot in Osaka, Japan.
In 1992, Douglas founded the short-lived Atlantic Records distributed label Third Stone Records. He founded the label with record producer Richard Rudolph, who became the company's president and CEO. Among the acts signed to Third Stone were Saigon Kick and Nona Gaye.
That same year, Douglas had another successful starring role when he appeared alongside Sharon Stone in the film Basic Instinct. The movie was a box office hit and sparked controversy over its depictions of bisexuality and lesbian people. In March 1994, Douglas announced that he had formed a new film production company, Douglas/Reuther Productions, in partnership with Steven Reuther. In 1994 Douglas and Demi Moore starred in the hit movie Disclosure focusing on the topic of sexual harassment with Douglas playing a man harassed by his new female boss. Other popular films he starred in during the decade were Falling Down, The American President, The Ghost and the Darkness, The Game, and a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's classic – Dial M for Murder – titled A Perfect Murder. In 1998 Douglas received the Crystal Globe award for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. On November 19, 1997, Douglas formed his fourth film production company, Further Films.
In 2000, Douglas starred in Steven Soderbergh's critically acclaimed film Traffic, opposite Benicio del Toro and future wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones. Douglas and the cast of Traffic were awarded a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. That same year he also received critical acclaim for his role in Wonder Boys, as a professor and novelist suffering from writer's block. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Drama and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.