Michael Douglas

Season 7, Episode 708

Original Airdate: February 18, 2001

Michael Douglas was born July 25, 1944 in New Brunswick, NJ to actor Kirk Douglas and British actress Diana Dill.

Raised by his mother, Douglas began acting after earning his college degree, from University of California at Santa Barbara, where roomed with actor and producer Danny DeVito. He began acting in theater productions before starring in a few obscure movies in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In 1972, he starred in the TV crime series The Streets of San Francisco. Then, in 1975, he hit the jackpot not as an actor, but as a producer of Academy Award winning film One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest. (Incidentally, he bought the screen rights to the book from his father, who had appeared in the Broadway stage version years earlier.)

He produced and starred in a number of movies starting in 1969 with his debut film Hail Hero and the nuclear drama The China Syndrome (1979) costarring Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon.

His real fame, however, did not come until 1987 when he played back-to-back screen stopping rolls in Wall Street, for which he won a second Oscar for Best Actor, and the thriller Fatal Attraction. He teamed up with pal Danny DeVito and leading lady Kathleen Turner in the action hit Romancing the Stone (1984), and its sequel Jewel of the Nile, as well as the black comedy War of the Roses (1989).

Michael Douglas has made a career embracing dark characters in such films as Basic Instinct (1992), Falling Down (1993), The Game (1997) and A Perfect Murder (1998). But he's not confined to unctuous villain roles, and has shown his more human side in films like The American President (1995), Wonder Boys (2000) and Traffic (2000).

Divorced from wife of 20 years Diandra Douglas, Michael made headlines when he married Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones. He now has two children, sons Cameron (with Diandra Douglas) and Dylan (with Catherine Zeta-Jones).