Michael Kirk Douglas, born September 25, 1944 is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; first as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2009. He is the eldest of actor Kirk Douglas's four sons. Douglas has been the announcer for NBC Nightly News since 2007.
Douglas was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the first child of actor Kirk Douglas and Bermudian actress Diana Dill. His paternal grandparents, Harry Demsky (born Herschel Danielovitch) and Bryna Demsky (née Sanglel), were Jewish immigrants from Gomel in Belarus (at that time a part of the Russian Empire). His mother and maternal grandparents, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Melville Dill and Ruth Rapalje Neilson, were natives of Devonshire Parish, Bermuda. Thomas Dill served as Attorney General of Bermuda and was commanding officer of the Bermuda Militia Artillery. Douglas has a younger brother, Joel Douglas (born 1947), and two paternal half-brothers, Peter Douglas (born 1955) and Eric Douglas (1958–2004).
Douglas started his film career in the late 1960s and early 1970s, appearing in little known films like Hail, Hero! and Summertree. His first significant role came in the TV series The Streets of San Francisco from 1972 to 1976, where 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 (named for the father of Bermuda-born Oona O'Neill) in Waterford, Connecticut, for the Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 1975, Douglas received from his father, Kirk Douglas, the rights to the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Michael went on to produce the film of the same name with Saul Zaentz. Kirk Douglas considered playing the starring role himself, having starred in an earlier stage version, but chose against it, considering himself too old. The lead role went instead to a young Jack Nicholson, who would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Actor. Douglas won the Award for Best Picture for producing the film. After leaving Streets of San Francisco in 1976, Douglas appeared in the medical thriller Coma in 1978 and Running in 1979. 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 Three Mile Island accident took place 12 days after the film's release).
Douglas' acting career was propelled to fame when he starred in the 1984 romantic adventure comedy Romancing the Stone. It also helped launch Kathleen Turner to stardom, reintroduced Douglas as a capable leading man, and gave director Bob Zemeckis his first box-office success. It was followed a year later by a sequel, The Jewel of the Nile.
The year 1987 saw Douglas star 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 again paired with Kathleen Turner for the 1989 film The War of the Roses, which also starred Danny 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 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 lesbianism. 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 during these decade were Falling Down, The American President, The Ghost and the Darkness, The Game (directed by David Fincher), 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.
In 2000, Douglas starred in Steven Soderbergh's critically acclaimed film Traffic, opposite Benicio del Toro and future wife Catherine Zeta-Jones. 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 as well as several other awards from critics.
Film critic and author Rob Edelman points out similarities in many of Douglas's roles, writing that he "has come to personify the contemporary, Caucasian middle-to-upper-class American male who finds himself the brunt of female anger because of real or imagined sexual slights." These themes of male victimization are seen in films such as Fatal Attraction (1987), War of the Roses, (1989), Falling Down (1993), and Disclosure, (1994). For his characters in films such as these, "any kind of sexual contact with someone other than his mate and the mother of his children is destined to come at a costly price."
However, Douglas is also able to play powerful characters with stronger dominating personalities equally well: as Gekko, in both versions of Wall Street, he acted the role of a "greedy yuppie personification of the Me generation," convinced that "greed is good;" in Romancing the Stone and The Jewel of the Nile, he played an idealistic soldier of fortune; in The Star Chamber (1983), he was a court judge fed up with an inadequate legal system, leading him to become involved with a vigilante group; and in Black Rain (1989), he proved he could also play a Stallone-like action hero as a New York City cop.
Having become recognized as both a successful producer and actor, he describes himself as "an actor first and a producer second." He has explained why he enjoys both functions:
"I love the fact that on one side, with acting, you can be a child — acting is wonderful for its innocence and the fun. . . On the other side, producing is fun for all the adult kinds of things you do. You deal in business, you deal with the creative forces. As an adult who continues to get older, you like the adult risks. It's flying without a net, taking chances and learning. I was never good in economics or business — had no business background, you know, and I like it."
He has also offered reasons why he has become successful in both acting and producing:
"I think I'm a chameleon. I think it's something that I possibly inherited early on as a child going back and forth between two families. I know that whether it's right or wrong, I have an ability to sort of fit into a lot of different situations and make people feel relatively comfortable in a wide range without giving up all my moral values. I think that same chameleonlike quality can transfer into films. I think if you can remember the reason you got involved with it in the first place and try to keep that impulsive, instinctive feeling even when you're being beaten down or exhausted or waylaid, you'll be successful."
In 2003, Douglas starred in It Runs in the Family, which featured three generations of his family (his parents, Kirk and Diana, as well as his own son, Cameron). The film, although a labor of love, was not successful, critically or at the box office. Douglas starred in the solid commercial action flick Don't Say a Word, then the poorly received action-thriller The Sentinel in 2006. During that time, he also guest-appeared on the episode, "Fagel Attraction", of the popular television sitcom Will and Grace, as a gay cop attracted to Will Truman (Eric McCormack); the performance earned Douglas an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Show.
Douglas was approached for Basic Instinct 2, but he declined to participate in the project. He said:
"Yes, they asked me to do it a while ago, I thought we had done it very effectively; [Paul] Verhoeven is a pretty good director. I haven't seen the sequel. I've only done one sequel in my life, The Jewel of the Nile, from Romancing The Stone. Besides, there were age issues, you know? Sharon still looks fabulous. The script was pretty good. Good for her, she's in her late-40s, and there are not a lot of parts around. The first one was probably the best picture of her career—it certainly made her career and she was great in it".
Douglas was set to star in Tragic Indifference, a courtroom thriller based on a landmark liability case against Ford Motor Company, according to Variety. Douglas will play the attorney who took Ford to court on behalf of a single mother from Texas who was paralyzed and nearly died after an accident. The trial exposed the automaker's indifference to flaws in its Sport Utility Vehicles (SUV). The movie will be based on Adam Penenberg's 2003 book of the same name. Douglas will play Attorney Tab Turner, who represented Donna Bailey after the Ford Explorer SUV she was riding in rolled over following a Firestone tire failure.
On December 17, 2007 it was announced that Douglas was to be the new voice at the beginning of NBC Nightly News, some two years after Howard Reig, the previous announcer, retired.
After filming Summertime (1971), he began dating Brenda Vaccaro. The relationship lasted for about six years.
In March 1977, 33 year old Douglas married 19 year old Diandra Luker, the daughter of an Austrian diplomat. They had one son, Cameron, born in 1978. In 1997 Diandra filed for divorce and was awarded $45 million as her settlement.
Dating since March 1999, Douglas married Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones on November 18, 2000. They were both born on September 25, though 25 years apart. Zeta-Jones says that when they met in Deauville, France, Douglas used the line "I want to father your children ". They have two children, Dylan Michael (born August 8, 2000) and Carys Zeta (born April 20, 2003).
They planned on renewing their wedding vows in 2010 as part of their 10th wedding anniversary. The idea was hers, and came after Douglas was found to have advanced stages of cancer. One report notes that "Michael was in tears when she suggested it to him," and he sees it as a “wonderful expression of love.”
It was announced on August 16, 2010, that Douglas was suffering from throat cancer and will undergo chemotherapy and radiation treatment. On August 31, 2010 Douglas appeared on Late Show with David Letterman and confirmed that the cancer was at an advanced stage IV. Douglas attributed the cancer to a combination of stress, his previous alcohol abuse, and years of heavy smoking.
In November 2010, Douglas was put on a special weight gain diet by his doctors due to the excessive weight loss leaving him weak. On January 11, 2011, he said in an interview that the tumor was gone. He admitted that the illness and aggressive treatment had caused him to lose 32 lbs in weight. He will have to have monthly screenings because there is a very high chance that the cancer could return over the course of the next two to three years. Although Douglas has described the cancer as throat cancer, many doctors believe he was actually diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer.
Douglas and Zeta-Jones hosted the annual Nobel Peace Prize concert in Oslo, Norway, on December 11, 2003. They acted as co-masters of ceremony in the concert celebrating the award given to Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi. In 2006, Douglas was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
He is an advocate of nuclear disarmament, a supporter of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and sits on the Board of Directors of the anti-war grantmaking foundation Ploughshares Fund. In 1998, he was appointed UN Messenger of Peace by Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He is a notable Democrat and has donated money to Barack Obama, Christopher Dodd, and Al Franken He has been a major supporter of gun control since John Lennon was murdered in 1980.
In 2006 he was a featured speaker in a public service campaign sponsored by a UN conference to focus attention on trade of illicit arms, especially of small arms and light weapons. Douglas made several appearances and offered his opinions:
"The conference is an opportunity for UN member states to build on the Program of Action and to encourage countries to strengthen their laws on the illicit trade, . . . an issue that affects us all . . .[and] while owning guns is a legal right in most countries, the illegal trade in guns continues to fuel conflict, crime and violence."
In 2009 Douglas joined the project Soldiers of Peace, a movie against all wars and for global peace.
Douglas lent his support for the campaign to release Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman, who after having been convicted of committing adultery, was given a sentence of death by stoning.
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