Michael Douglas
Born on September 25, 1944, in New Brunswick, Michael Douglas built a career across film and television that earned him some of the most recognized honors in the entertainment industry. His notable work includes the film Wall Street, and over the course of his career he accumulated Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award, marking sustained recognition across multiple branches of the industry.
Douglas holds citizenship in both the United States and the United Kingdom. He was educated at the Allen-Stevenson School, Eaglebrook School, and Choate Rosemary Hall before attending the University of California, Santa Barbara. Working in the English language, he established himself across multiple roles in the entertainment world, functioning as a film actor, television actor, and film producer.
The range of Douglas's professional output — spanning performance and production — drew formal acknowledgment from the American Film Institute, which presented him with its Life Achievement Award. That honor, combined with his Academy Awards and Golden Globe Awards, places him among a small group of American entertainers recognized at the highest levels of both acting and producing. His work in Wall Street remains a concrete, named point of reference within his filmography, and the AFI Life Achievement Award stands as one of the most definitive markers of his standing within the American film community.
Quotes by Michael Douglas
I've just kind of been used to carrying movies. I look back and I'm just used to being in every single scene in a lot of pictures.
'King of California' was just, I thought, a really great, fresh, original kind of script. I loved the tone, the mix of tragedy, comedy, and drama, and that it was a good part.
My mother is Bermudan, so I had a lot of memories when I was a kid, used to go down to Bermuda a lot.
'Five Easy Pieces,' 'Easy Rider' - those are indie pictures; those were not studio pictures. They had relationships with studio distribution, but they were indies.
'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' which my father had tried to get made for six, seven years, and I for four, was turned down by every studio. Every studio in the world had passed on it.
Women are now very comfortable to have babies into their late 30s. You can be a father in your 50s. I'm not saying it's for everybody, and I think people have to get their own life secure before they take on the responsibility of a partner and children.
I think the quality of television, given the amount of time you have, how short you have, is proportionally so much better than most movies.
All the pictures I do are contemporary. I've sort of discovered I haven't really been into science fiction or period pictures. And so, in that vein, psychological thrillers play a big part.