An actor with over forty years of experience in theatre, film and television..
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Michael Douglas
Academy Award-Winning Actor
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An actor with over forty years of experience in theatre, film and television, Michael Douglas branched out into independent feature production in 1975 with the Academy Award-winning One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). Since then, as a producer and as an actor-producer, he has shown an uncanny knack for choosing projects that reflect changing trends and public concerns. Over the years, he has been involved in such controversial and politically influential motion pictures as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The China Syndrome (1979) and Traffic (2000), as well as such popular films as Romancing the Stone (1984) and Fatal Attraction (1987).
The son of Kirk and Diana Douglas, Michael was born in New Jersey. He attended the elite preparatory Choate School and spent his summers with his father on movie sets. Although accepted at Yale, Douglas attended the University of California, Santa Barbara.
After receiving his B.A. degree in 1968, Douglas moved to New York City to continue his dramatic training, studying at the American Place Theatre with Wynn Handman and at the Neighborhood Playhouse, where he appeared in workshop productions of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author and Thornton Wilder’s Happy Journey.
A few months after he arrived in New York, Douglas got his first big break when he was cast in the pivotal role of the free-spirited scientist who compromises his liberal views to accept a lucrative job with a high-tech chemical corporation in the CBS Playhouse production of Ellen M. Violett’s drama, The Experiment, which was televised nationwide on February 25, 1969.
