Michael Douglas

Acting

Born Sep 25, 1944

From New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA

Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is a retired American 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. His early acting roles included film, stage, and television productions. Douglas first achieved prominence for his performance in the ABC police procedural television series The Streets of San Francisco, for which he received three consecutive Emmy Award nominations. In 1975, Douglas produced One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, having acquired the rights to the Ken Kesey novel from his father. The film received critical and popular acclaim and won the Academy Award for Best Picture, earning Douglas his first Oscar as one of the film's producers. Douglas went on to produce films including The China Syndrome (1979) and Romancing the Stone (1984), for which he received the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture—Musical or Comedy, and The Jewel of the Nile (1985). Douglas received critical acclaim for his portrayal of Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor (a role he reprised in the sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps in 2010). Other notable roles include in Fatal Attraction (1987), The War of the Roses (1989), Basic Instinct (1992), Falling Down (1993), The American President (1995), The Game (1997), Traffic (2000), and Wonder Boys (2000). In 2013, for his portrayal of Liberace in the HBO film Behind the Candelabra, he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie. Douglas starred as an ageing acting coach in the Netflix comedy series The Kominsky Method (2018–2021), for which he won a Golden Globe Award for Best ctor—television series musical or omedy. He has portrayed Hank Pym in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, beginning with Ant-Man (2015). 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. In July 2025, Douglas said that he was largely retired from acting, saying "I realized I had to stop [...] I did not want to be one of those people who dropped dead on the set". He added that while he was attached to one additional project and did not fully rule out future projects "if something special came up", he had no plans to work regularly again.

Michael Douglas

Known For

Avengers: Endgame

Ant-Man

The Game

Basic Instinct

Ant-Man and the Wasp

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Fatal Attraction

Traffic

Falling Down

A Perfect Murder

Filmography — Acting

Avengers: Endgame

Ant-Man

The Game

Basic Instinct

Ant-Man and the Wasp

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Fatal Attraction

Traffic

Falling Down

A Perfect Murder

Wall Street

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

The Ghost and the Darkness

Romancing the Stone

Disclosure

Beyond the Reach

The Jewel of the Nile

Black Rain

Don't Say a Word

The Sentinel

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

The War of the Roses

Last Vegas

Unlocked

The American President

Wonder Boys

Shining Through

Haywire

One Night at McCool's

Coma

A Chorus Line

Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen

Animal World

Solitary Man

The China Syndrome

Behind the Candelabra

Ken San

You, Me and Dupree

And So It Goes

Close Up

The Earth Day Special

The In-Laws

Cast a Giant Shadow

The Star Chamber

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

Looking Through Water

Trumbo

Nos Bastidores de Hollywood

Get Bruce!

It Runs in the Family

One Day in September

Summertree

It's My Turn

It Takes a Lunatic

Marvel Studios Assembled: The Making of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy

Fog City Mavericks

Still Laugh-In: The Stars Celebrate

King of California

When Michael Calls

Black Rain: Making The Film

Napoleon and Samantha

Sword-and-Sandal: The Story of the Period Epic

Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon

Richard Attenborough: A Life in Film

The World's Greatest Stunts: A Tribute to Hollywood Stuntmen

TVTV Looks at the Oscars