Michael Douglas made his debut in cinema in 1962, as an assistant director on Only the Wild, a film produced and played by his father. He then studied drama at the University Of Santa Barbara, California. It was there that he met Danny DeVito, with whom he became friends and often shared the poster.
MICHAEL DOUGLAS
After two short appearances ( L’Ombre d’un Géant in 1966 and Where’s jack in 1969), Michael Douglas began his real acting career in 1969 in Hail, hero, in which he plays a pacifist hippie who decides to fight in Vietnam. This film earned him a nomination for the 1970 Golden Globe for Best Male Actor. The TV series The Streets of San Francisco made him famous in 1972: he played the young inspector Steve Keller who teamed up with a more experienced man, alias Karl Malden. The series lasts until 1976 and Michael Douglas directs a few episodes. He was also nominated for the Golden Globe for Best TV Actor for this series.
In 1975, he produced Flight over a cuckoo’s nest his father Kirk Douglas had performed the play in the theater, then bought the rights without ever having been able to adapt it to the cinema. The film was a huge success and won 5 Oscars, including Best Producer. At the end of the 1970s, Michael Douglas played in The Chinese Syndrome, which he co-produced with his partner Jane Fonda. His career subsequently declined with Le Vainqueur , C’est ma chance and La Nuit des judges , which did not meet with the expected public success.
It was not until 1984 that Michael Douglas triumphed again in In pursuit of the green diamond (by Robert Zemeckis ) and his sequel Le Diamant du Nil signedLewis Teague , alongside Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito . The actor has since become a sure box office with films such as Fatal Attraction of Adrian Lyne (1987) or Wall Street to Oliver Stone, which earned him the Oscar for Best Actor in 1987 and the Golden Globe 1988 for Best Dramatic Actor.
He continued with The War of the Roses by his accomplice Danny DeVito (which earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Comedy Actor in 1990), Basic instinct by Paul Verhoeven (1992), or The Game by David Fincher (1997). It slips into the skin of the US President for The American President and receives another Golden Globe nomination, and starred alongside Gwyneth Paltrow in A Perfect Murder, a remake of Crime was almost perfect for Alfred Hitchcock. The same year, Michael Douglas received an Honorary Cesar. In 2020, Michael Douglas’ net worth is estimated to be around $ 300 million
2000 is a good year for the actor: he is the poster for Wonder Boys in which he portrays a confused professor novelist, and then Traffic from Steven Soderbergh, a film adapted from a British mini-series on the drug trade which has received great public and critical acclaim. After the thriller Not a Word and an appearance in Divine but dangerous in 2001, Michael Douglas returned to the screens in June 2003 with the comedy Spy but not too much by Andrew Fleming, alongside Albert Brooks.
At the same time, the actor continued his activities as a producer and in 1988 founded his production company, Stonebridge Entertainment Inc. Here too, success was there, with L’Experience interdite by Joel Schumacher (1990), Made in America by Richard Benjamin (1993), and finally Turnaround of John Woo (1987). He married in 2000 the actress Catherine Zeta-Jones who gave him two children and with whom he shared the poster for Traffic, without scenes in common however. After this collaboration with Steven Soderbergh , he found a lighter style by participating in the comedies Divine but dangerous (2001), Spy but not too much! (2002) and plays opposite his father Kirk Douglas and his son Cameron Douglas, in the comedy A Beautiful Family (id.).
Although he remains attached to the world of the thrillerby playing a psychiatrist having to do everything possible to save the life of his own daughter in Not a Word or by becoming a secret service agent in The Sentinel , on which he is also a producer, Michael Douglas remains attached to the register of comedy with supporting roles in Toi et moi and Duprée (2006), Haunted by his ex (2009) and the first role of King of California in 2007. Returning to the drama with The Solitary Man with Susan Sarandon and Danny DeVito, the actor finds in 2010 the character of Gordon Gekko in Wall Street: money never sleeps, still in front of Oliver Stone’s camera.
After surviving his cancer detected in 2010, Michael Douglas continued his career and teamed up again with Steven Soderbergh: for Trapped (2012) and especially My Life with Liberace (2013), in which he slips into the skin of the famous artist living in excess. After these two films, the actor plays a retired crazy sides to Robert De Niro , Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline in the comedy Last Vegas by Jon Turtle taub . In 2015, he returned to a more action-oriented register, with the thriller Out of reach where he plays an ignoble businessman seeking to get rid of his guide in the middle of the desert, and the highly anticipated super heroic blockbuster Ant-Man in which he plays Paul Rudd’s mentor.
