Michael Douglas

Michael Douglas - Biography

Personal details

Name: Michael Douglas
Born: 29 September 1944 (Age: 66)
Where: New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA
Height: 5' 10"
Awards: Won 2 Oscars and 1 Golden Globe

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Biography:

As an actor and producer, Michael Douglas has been involved in the generation of more box-office dollars than most of Hollywood's current big-shots. He takes a fair amount home with him too, having been paid $14 million for Basic Instinct, $20 million for The Game, another $20 million for A Perfect Murder, and $10 million for Stephen Soderbergh's Traffic. But to judge Douglas on his outrageous earning-power would be to do him a major disservice. He is, after all, one of the edgiest, funniest and most courageous actors of his generation.

Born on September 25th, 1944, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Michael was, famously, the child of superstar Kirk Douglas. His parents were divorced when he was small, and he was raised by his mother, Diana Dill, and her new husband, in the East, far from Hollywood (he has one brother, Joel, and two half-brothers, Peter and Eric). Attending various prep schools (including Eaglebrook School in Deerfield, MA), he subsequently decided against the prestigious Yale in favour of the University of California, in Santa Barbara (a beautiful place where he still has a home). Yet, despite his distance from his natural father, the film industry intrigued him, drew him in, and after graduating as a Bachelor Of Arts in 1968, he scored some minor roles in even more minor movies, before rising to prominence as Karl Malden's maverick sidekick in the longrunning TV cop show The Streets Of San Francisco.

His first brush with massive success though came offscreen rather than on. His father had for some time owned the rights to Ken Kesey's humorous and harrowing One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, indeed he'd earlier starred in a stage version, but Michael somehow managed to persuade Kirk to let HIM try to get the film into production. After some years of effort, he finally pulled it off and, thanks to Milos Forman's sharp direction and Jack Nicholson's magnificent performance as McMurphy (a role many think he's still playing to this day), the resulting masterpiece snapped up five Oscars - one of which, for Best Picture, was presented to Michael. The film also featured Danny DeVito, for years a close friend of Michael's, who'd later play alongside him in The Jewel Of The Nile and direct him in The War Of The Roses.