Background and career
Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is an 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, the Honorary Palme d'Or 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. He produced One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), having acquired the rights to the novel from his father and later earned the Academy Award for Best Picture as a producer. Douglas won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987), a role which he reprised in the sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010). Other notable roles include in The China Syndrome (1979), Romancing the Stone (1984), The Jewel of the Nile (1985), Fatal Attraction (1987), The War of the Roses (1989), Basic Instinct (1992), Falling Down (1993), The American President (1995), The Game (1997), Traffic (2000), Wonder Boys (2000), and Solitary Man (2009).
On television, Douglas started his career earning three consecutive Emmy Award nominations for playing a homicide inspector in the ABC police procedural series The Streets of San Francisco (1972–1976). He won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for portraying Liberace in the HBO film Behind the Candelabra (2013), and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy for playing an aging acting coach in the Netflix comedy series The Kominsky Method (2018–2021). He played Benjamin Franklin in the Apple TV+ miniseries Franklin (2024). From 2015 to 2023, He portrayed Hank Pym in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He announced his retirement from acting in 2025, citing his age and desire to spend more time with his family as being the deciding factors for him.
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.
How Michael Douglas makes money
On November 24, 1969, Douglas formed his first independent film production company, Bigstick Productions, Limited. In December 1976, Michael and his brother Peter became head of their father's film production company, The Bryna Company, though Michael would depart by 1978 to focus exclusively on producing through his own Bigstick Productions.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (2026-10-21), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
