Michael Douglas Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth & Biography

Michael Douglas is an American actor and producer whose career spans more than fifty years, from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which he produced, to Wall Street, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor as Gordon Gekko. Born on September 25, 1944, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Douglas, 82, is the son of the legendary actor Kirk Douglas and has become a star in his own right.

Quick Facts

Who Is Michael Douglas?

Michael Douglas is an actor and producer who has played some of the most memorable characters in American film, from the ruthless corporate raider Gordon Gekko in Wall Street (1987), who declared that “greed is good,” to the troubled husband in Fatal Attraction (1987) and the detective in Basic Instinct (1992). He is also a producer who has won the Academy Award for Best Picture, for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), a film he produced with Saul Zaentz, based on the novel by Ken Kesey, and which starred Jack Nicholson. Douglas has played presidents, prosecutors, professors and conmen, and he has shown a willingness to take on roles that are both heroic and flawed.

Douglas first reached a wide audience as Inspector Steve Keller in the television series The Streets of San Francisco (1972-1977), in which he starred opposite Karl Malden, and he went on to play leading roles in Romancing the Stone (1984), The Jewel of the Nile (1985), Fatal Attraction, Wall Street and The War of the Roses (1989). He has also played in The American President (1995), Wonder Boys (2000), Traffic (2000), Behind the Candelabra (2013), in which he played Liberace, and in The Kominsky Method (2018-2021), a Netflix series in which he played Sandy Kominsky, an acting coach, a role that brought him a Golden Globe. He has also played Hank Pym in the Marvel films Ant-Man (2015) and Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018).

Early Life & Background

Michael Kirk Douglas was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the eldest son of the actor Kirk Douglas and the actress Diana Dill. His younger brother, Joel Douglas, became a film producer, and his half-brothers, Peter and Eric Douglas, also worked in film. Growing up in California and in Connecticut, Douglas attended the Allen-Stevenson School in New York and the Eaglebrook School in Massachusetts, and he studied at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he majored in drama and graduated in 1968. He also studied at the American Place Theatre in New York.

He made his acting debut in the film Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), in which he had a small, uncredited role, and he worked on stage and in small television roles before his breakthrough in The Streets of San Francisco. He produced One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a film that was a critical and commercial success, winning five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Jack Nicholson, and which established Douglas as a producer with a keen eye for material. He went on to produce The China Syndrome (1979) and Romancing the Stone, a film that he also starred in, opposite Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito.

Career

Douglas’s career as an actor took off in the 1980s, with Romancing the Stone, Fatal Attraction, Wall Street and The War of the Roses, a film directed by Danny DeVito, in which he played Oliver Rose, a man whose marriage ends in a bitter divorce. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Wall Street, in which he played Gordon Gekko, a corporate raider who uses insider trading to make money, and he was nominated for the Golden Globe for Fatal Attraction, in which he played Dan Gallagher, a lawyer who has an affair with a woman who becomes obsessed with him.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Douglas worked in Basic Instinct, Falling Down (1993), Disclosure (1994), The American President, Wonder Boys, Traffic and Behind the Candelabra, in which he played Liberace, a performance that earned him a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award. He has been married to the actress Catherine Zeta-Jones since 2000, and they have two children together, Dylan and Carys, as well as a son, Cameron, from Douglas’s first marriage to Diandra Luker. In 2010 he was diagnosed with throat cancer, and he underwent treatment, including chemotherapy and radiation, and he has spoken openly about his health and about his recovery. He has continued to work in film and television, including in Ant-Man, The Kominsky Method and Franklin (2024), a series in which he plays Benjamin Franklin.

Facts About Michael Douglas

• He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Wall Street in 1988, playing Gordon Gekko.
• He won the Academy Award for Best Picture as the producer of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1976.
• He played Inspector Steve Keller in the series The Streets of San Francisco (1972-1977).
• He won a Golden Globe and an Emmy for playing Liberace in Behind the Candelabra (2013).
• He has been married to actress Catherine Zeta-Jones since 2000, and they have two children together.

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