Michael Kirk Douglas was born on September 25th, 1944, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He is the elder of the two sons of Diana and Kirk Douglas, the legendary film star of the 1950s and 1960s. When Michael was 6, his parents divorced, and he lived with his mother, only seeing Kirk on holidays. In his teenage years, he attended a number of prep schools. The young Douglas went on to college, receiving a B.A. in drama from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1968.

Soon Michael Douglas resolved to be an actor, much to the chagrin of his father Kirk, who knew too well the dissatisfaction that could come even from a successful career in movies. But Douglas defied critics and his father by taking on less-heroic roles in the early 1970s. Douglas' first big break came on the TV series The Streets of San Francisco, which cast him alongside Karl Malden; Douglas also earned his first directing credit on the show.

Douglas quit The Streets of San Francisco in 1976 and turned to producing. For a number of years, Douglas had been trying to get a movie version made of Ken Kesey's novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; in 1975, his efforts paid off spectacularly. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, starring Jack Nicholson and directed by Milos Forman, swept the Academy Awards, and Douglas took home a Best Picture Oscar for himself.

In the late 1970s, Douglas was in front of the camera again, starring in topical thrillers like Coma (1978) and The China Syndrome (1979), which he also produced. But it was in the 1980s that Douglas' acting career really took off. He teamed up with Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito -- who had roomed with Douglas years earlier, and had appeared in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest -- on the hit comedy Romancing the Stone (1984). The three would reunite for its sequel, The Jewelof the Nile (1985), and the divorce black comedy, The War of the Roses (1989).

1987 proved to be a banner year for Douglas. He played an unfaithful and beleaguered husband in Fatal Attraction, a jilted-woman thriller that spawned a number of imitators. Douglas also took the juicy role of Gordon Gecko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street, which won him another Oscar. Michael Douglas became only the second person, after Sir Laurence Olivier, ever to win an Oscar for both Best Picture and Best Actor.

Over the next 15 years, Douglas solidified his reputation in a variety of edgy roles. He topped the bill in hits like Basic Instinct (1992), Falling Down (1993), Disclosure (1994), The American President (1995), The Ghost and the Darkness (1996), The Game (1997), and A Perfect Murder (1998).

In the new millennium, he has softened his image with lighthearted movies such as Wonder Boys (2000), One Night At McCool's (2000), The In-Laws (2003), and It Runs in the Family (2003), co-starring his father, Kirk Douglas. At the same time, Michael Douglas hasn't abandoned the dramatic, and starred in dramas and thrillers like multi-Oscar winner Traffic (2000) and Don't Say a Word (2001).

Douglas' personal life has also had its dramatic moments. Married to Diandra Luker in 1977, Diandra grew dissatisfied with Douglas as a husband (he was rumored to be a womanizer), and they divorced in 2000; later that year he married his Traffic co-star Catherine Zeta-Jones, who is exactly 25 years his junior -- they share the same birthday.

Douglas has fathered three children: son Cameron, with Diandra Luker, and son Dylan Michael and daughter Carys, with Catherine Zeta-Jones.

On the film front, Douglas is starring in and producing 2005's The Ride Down to Mt. Morgan. Credit Askmen.