Michael Douglas in Basic Instinct (1992)
Spanish postcard by Novograf. Photo: Michael Douglas in Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1992).
Michael Douglas (1944) is an American actor-producer best known for his roles in films like Wall Street (1987), Fatal Attraction (1987) and Basic Instinct (1992). The elder son of Kirk Douglas gained fame after starring in the police series Streets of San Francisco (1972–1977). Douglas branched out into independent feature production in 1975 with the acclaimed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which he won an Oscar as one of the film's producers. Starring roles followed in The China Syndrome (1979), Romancing the Stone (1984) and Wall Street (1987), for which he won his second Oscar. Later films include Traffic (2000), Wonder Boys (2000), the Emmy Award-winning Behind the Candelabra (2013), and Ant-Man (2015).
Michael Kirk Douglas was born in 1944, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to actor Kirk Douglas and his wife, Diana Dill. Douglas grew up with three brothers: Joel, Peter, and Eric. Douglas's parents divorced when he was six, and he went to live with his mother and her new husband. Only seeing Kirk on holidays, Michael attended Eaglebrook school in Deerfield, Massachusetts, where he was about a year younger than all of his classmates. Douglas's strained relationship with his father developed more as he progressed through life. He studied drama at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and in New York at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre and the American Place Theatre. Douglas began his Hollywood career as an assistant director on some of his father's 1960s films. Michael made his film debut in his father's film Cast a Giant Shadow (Melville Shavelson, 1966). He played roles in several television dramas, including the leading role in the adaptation of John Weston's controversial novel, Hail, Hero! (David Miller, 1969). His performance earned him a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Male Newcomer. Douglas became well-known by co-starring with Karl Malden in the TV series The Streets of San Francisco (1972-1977). The police series became one of ABC's highest-rated prime-time programs in the mid-1970s. Douglas earned three successive Emmy Award nominations for his performance and he directed two episodes of the show. In 1975, Douglas served as executive producer for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman, 1975), which went on to win five Academy Awards, including one for Best Picture. The film grossed more than $180 million at the box office. He got involved in the film after his father, who owned the rights to Ken Kesey's novel of the same name, couldn't successfully develop it into a film. Despite the success of the film, it was difficult for Douglas to find work as an actor, having received so much recognition as a producer. After leaving The Streets of San Francisco in 1976, Douglas played a hospital doctor in the medical thriller Coma (Michael Crichton, 1978). He then co-produced and co-starred with Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon in The China Syndrome (James Bridges, 1979), a drama about a nuclear power plant accident. In 1980, Douglas was involved in a serious skiing accident that sidelined his acting career for three years.
Michael Douglas became a star with his leading role in tongue-in-cheek romantic fantasy Romancing the Stone (Robert Zemeckis, 1984). He portrayed Jack Colton, an Indiana Jones-type adventurer. His successful teaming with Danny DeVito and Kathleen Turner led to a sequel, The Jewel of the Nile (Lewis Teague, 1985). The three worked again in The War of the Roses (Danny DeVito, 1989), a dark comedy about an ugly divorce. In 1987, Douglas made two films that reflected a much darker side: Fatal Attraction (Adrian Lyne, 1987), in which he played an adulterer stalked by an ex-lover — played by Glenn Close — and Wall Street (Oliver Stone, 1987), in which he played the corporate raider Gordon Gekko, whose trademark slogan is "Greed is good." For this role, Douglas won an Academy Award for Best Actor. He continued exploring his dark side years later, in the thriller Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1992), co-starring Sharon Stone. The film was a box office hit and sparked controversy over its depictions of bisexuality and lesbianism. In 1988, Douglas formed a production company, Stonebridge Entertainment, Inc., which produced Flatliners (Joel Schumacher, 1990) and Radio Flyer (Richard Donner, 1992). In 1992, he began a 30-day treatment for alcoholism and drug addiction at Sierra Tucson Center. Douglas gave one of his most powerful performances opposite Robert Duvall in Joel Schumacher's controversial drama Falling Down (1993). That year, he produced Made in America (1993), then starred as a sexually harassed man in Disclosure (Barry Levinson, 1994), based on the bestseller by Michael Crichton, and as the titular commander-in-chief in The American President (Rob Reiner, 1995), co-starring Annette Bening.
In 1994, Michael Douglas signed a development deal at Paramount that included The Ghost and the Darkness (Stephen Hopkins, 1996), The Game (David Fincher, 1997), and A Perfect Murder (Andrew Davis, 1998). He executive produced The Rainmaker (Francis Ford Coppola, 1997), starring Matt Damon, as well as the action film, Face/Off (John Woo, 1997) with John Travolta and Nicolas Cage. Douglas earned critical acclaim for his starring role as a rumpled professor and novelist suffering from writer's block in Wonder Boys (Curtis Hanson, 2000). In Traffic (Steven Soderbergh, 2000), Douglas played Robert Wakefield, a newly appointed drug czar confronted by the drug war both at home and abroad. Traffic was named Best Picture by New York Film Critics and won four Oscars. Douglas then headlined the psychological thriller Don't Say a Word (Gary Fleder, 2001), co-starring Brittany Murphy. He featured alongside his famous father, his mother, and his son, Cameron in It Runs in the Family (2003), about a multi-generational clan trying to get along. The film fared poorly at the box office. In 2004 Michael and Kirk filmed the intimate HBO documentary 'A Father, A Son... Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'. Directed by award-winning filmmaker Lee Grant, the documentary examines the professional and personal lives of both men, and the impacts they each made on the film industry. In 2010, Douglas announced that he would be reprising his role as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps (Oliver Stone, 2010), also starring Shia LaBeouf and Carey Mulligan. Douglas went on to work on the biopic Behind the Candelabra (Steven Soderbergh, 2013), starring in the film as the famous 1950s and 1960s entertainer Liberace. Matt Damon played his partner Scott Thorson in the critically acclaimed 2013 television film. Douglas won an Emmy Award for his role. He also filmed Last Vegas (John Turtletaub, 2013) with Robert De Niro. In the following years, Douglas starred opposite Diane Keaton in And So It Goes (Rob Reiner, 2014) and the Marvel superhero action/comedy Ant-Man (Peyton Reed, 2015) opposite Paul Rudd. He reprised his role as biochemist Hank Pym in the sequel Ant-Man and the Wasp (Peyton Reed, 2018) and also appeared in the superhero film Avengers: Endgame (Anthony Russo, Joe Russo, 2019.) In 1977, Michael Douglas married Diandra Luker They had one son, Cameron, but were separated in 1995 and later divorced. In 2000, Douglas married Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, his Traffic co-star. The couple welcomed a son, Dylan Michael Douglas, in 2000, followed by daughter Carys Zeta Douglas in 2003. In 2013, Douglas and Zeta-Jones separated after more than 12 years of marriage, but they reconciled in 2014. Outside of his busy acting career, Douglas is active in promoting human rights. His work in this area includes serving as a United Nations messenger of peace. Douglas currently stars as an aging acting coach in Chuck Lorre's comedy series The Kominsky Method, for which he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy, and in the Netflix series Green Eggs and Ham, where he voices Guy-Am-I.
Sources: Biography.com, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Michael Douglas in Basic Instinct (1992)
Spanish postcard by Novograf. Photo: Michael Douglas in Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1992).
Michael Douglas (1944) is an American actor-producer best known for his roles in films like Wall Street (1987), Fatal Attraction (1987) and Basic Instinct (1992). The elder son of Kirk Douglas gained fame after starring in the police series Streets of San Francisco (1972–1977). Douglas branched out into independent feature production in 1975 with the acclaimed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which he won an Oscar as one of the film's producers. Starring roles followed in The China Syndrome (1979), Romancing the Stone (1984) and Wall Street (1987), for which he won his second Oscar. Later films include Traffic (2000), Wonder Boys (2000), the Emmy Award-winning Behind the Candelabra (2013), and Ant-Man (2015).
Michael Kirk Douglas was born in 1944, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to actor Kirk Douglas and his wife, Diana Dill. Douglas grew up with three brothers: Joel, Peter, and Eric. Douglas's parents divorced when he was six, and he went to live with his mother and her new husband. Only seeing Kirk on holidays, Michael attended Eaglebrook school in Deerfield, Massachusetts, where he was about a year younger than all of his classmates. Douglas's strained relationship with his father developed more as he progressed through life. He studied drama at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and in New York at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre and the American Place Theatre. Douglas began his Hollywood career as an assistant director on some of his father's 1960s films. Michael made his film debut in his father's film Cast a Giant Shadow (Melville Shavelson, 1966). He played roles in several television dramas, including the leading role in the adaptation of John Weston's controversial novel, Hail, Hero! (David Miller, 1969). His performance earned him a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Male Newcomer. Douglas became well-known by co-starring with Karl Malden in the TV series The Streets of San Francisco (1972-1977). The police series became one of ABC's highest-rated prime-time programs in the mid-1970s. Douglas earned three successive Emmy Award nominations for his performance and he directed two episodes of the show. In 1975, Douglas served as executive producer for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman, 1975), which went on to win five Academy Awards, including one for Best Picture. The film grossed more than $180 million at the box office. He got involved in the film after his father, who owned the rights to Ken Kesey's novel of the same name, couldn't successfully develop it into a film. Despite the success of the film, it was difficult for Douglas to find work as an actor, having received so much recognition as a producer. After leaving The Streets of San Francisco in 1976, Douglas played a hospital doctor in the medical thriller Coma (Michael Crichton, 1978). He then co-produced and co-starred with Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon in The China Syndrome (James Bridges, 1979), a drama about a nuclear power plant accident. In 1980, Douglas was involved in a serious skiing accident that sidelined his acting career for three years.
Michael Douglas became a star with his leading role in tongue-in-cheek romantic fantasy Romancing the Stone (Robert Zemeckis, 1984). He portrayed Jack Colton, an Indiana Jones-type adventurer. His successful teaming with Danny DeVito and Kathleen Turner led to a sequel, The Jewel of the Nile (Lewis Teague, 1985). The three worked again in The War of the Roses (Danny DeVito, 1989), a dark comedy about an ugly divorce. In 1987, Douglas made two films that reflected a much darker side: Fatal Attraction (Adrian Lyne, 1987), in which he played an adulterer stalked by an ex-lover — played by Glenn Close — and Wall Street (Oliver Stone, 1987), in which he played the corporate raider Gordon Gekko, whose trademark slogan is "Greed is good." For this role, Douglas won an Academy Award for Best Actor. He continued exploring his dark side years later, in the thriller Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1992), co-starring Sharon Stone. The film was a box office hit and sparked controversy over its depictions of bisexuality and lesbianism. In 1988, Douglas formed a production company, Stonebridge Entertainment, Inc., which produced Flatliners (Joel Schumacher, 1990) and Radio Flyer (Richard Donner, 1992). In 1992, he began a 30-day treatment for alcoholism and drug addiction at Sierra Tucson Center. Douglas gave one of his most powerful performances opposite Robert Duvall in Joel Schumacher's controversial drama Falling Down (1993). That year, he produced Made in America (1993), then starred as a sexually harassed man in Disclosure (Barry Levinson, 1994), based on the bestseller by Michael Crichton, and as the titular commander-in-chief in The American President (Rob Reiner, 1995), co-starring Annette Bening.
In 1994, Michael Douglas signed a development deal at Paramount that included The Ghost and the Darkness (Stephen Hopkins, 1996), The Game (David Fincher, 1997), and A Perfect Murder (Andrew Davis, 1998). He executive produced The Rainmaker (Francis Ford Coppola, 1997), starring Matt Damon, as well as the action film, Face/Off (John Woo, 1997) with John Travolta and Nicolas Cage. Douglas earned critical acclaim for his starring role as a rumpled professor and novelist suffering from writer's block in Wonder Boys (Curtis Hanson, 2000). In Traffic (Steven Soderbergh, 2000), Douglas played Robert Wakefield, a newly appointed drug czar confronted by the drug war both at home and abroad. Traffic was named Best Picture by New York Film Critics and won four Oscars. Douglas then headlined the psychological thriller Don't Say a Word (Gary Fleder, 2001), co-starring Brittany Murphy. He featured alongside his famous father, his mother, and his son, Cameron in It Runs in the Family (2003), about a multi-generational clan trying to get along. The film fared poorly at the box office. In 2004 Michael and Kirk filmed the intimate HBO documentary 'A Father, A Son... Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'. Directed by award-winning filmmaker Lee Grant, the documentary examines the professional and personal lives of both men, and the impacts they each made on the film industry. In 2010, Douglas announced that he would be reprising his role as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps (Oliver Stone, 2010), also starring Shia LaBeouf and Carey Mulligan. Douglas went on to work on the biopic Behind the Candelabra (Steven Soderbergh, 2013), starring in the film as the famous 1950s and 1960s entertainer Liberace. Matt Damon played his partner Scott Thorson in the critically acclaimed 2013 television film. Douglas won an Emmy Award for his role. He also filmed Last Vegas (John Turtletaub, 2013) with Robert De Niro. In the following years, Douglas starred opposite Diane Keaton in And So It Goes (Rob Reiner, 2014) and the Marvel superhero action/comedy Ant-Man (Peyton Reed, 2015) opposite Paul Rudd. He reprised his role as biochemist Hank Pym in the sequel Ant-Man and the Wasp (Peyton Reed, 2018) and also appeared in the superhero film Avengers: Endgame (Anthony Russo, Joe Russo, 2019.) In 1977, Michael Douglas married Diandra Luker They had one son, Cameron, but were separated in 1995 and later divorced. In 2000, Douglas married Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, his Traffic co-star. The couple welcomed a son, Dylan Michael Douglas, in 2000, followed by daughter Carys Zeta Douglas in 2003. In 2013, Douglas and Zeta-Jones separated after more than 12 years of marriage, but they reconciled in 2014. Outside of his busy acting career, Douglas is active in promoting human rights. His work in this area includes serving as a United Nations messenger of peace. Douglas currently stars as an aging acting coach in Chuck Lorre's comedy series The Kominsky Method, for which he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy, and in the Netflix series Green Eggs and Ham, where he voices Guy-Am-I.
Sources: Biography.com, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.