Michael's brother is Joel Douglas who is the head of Victorine Studios in Nice, France, and his two half brothers are Peter Douglas, producer, and Eric Douglas, actor, comedian. Michael was married to Diandra Douglas, producer, in 1977. They had a son Cameron and were divorced 1997 which cost him an estimated $60 million.
He has had significant others since his divorce, which include: Elizabeth Vargas, TV newscaster, and Maureen Dowd, newspaper columnist. As of January 2000 he is engaged to Catherine Zeta-Jones, actress.
At the age of eight his mother and his stepfather, William Darrid, moved him to Connecticut. He attended a military school and on vacations he developed a love for film making while spending time with his father, Kirk, on film locations.
His first actual film work experience came in 1962 as the assistant director on Lonely Are the Brave. Smitten by film he passed the opportunity to attend Yale and opted for drama at the University of California at Santa Barbara. There he roomed with the now famous Danny DeVito, who became a life-long friend.
From there he studied drama in New York and made his film debut as an actor playing a pacifist Vietnam hippie draft evader in Hail Hero! (1969). Another Vietnam movie followed, Summertree (1971), in which he played a dying Vietnam vet.
Douglas was cast as volatile rookie police inspector Steve Keller opposite Karl Malden in the 1972 series, Streets of San Francisco, and occasionally directed episodes of it through 1976.
Douglas' father, Kirk, owned the film rights to Broadway story of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Kirk had appeared in the Broadway hit but failed to get it produced in film. Michael bought the rights to the story and produced it in 1975 starring Jack Nicholson in one of his best movie roles.
This film won him a Golden Globe: Best Motion Picture-Drama and an Oscar: Best Picture. Michael became Tinsel town's hottest producer and to date his track record for selling movies is unrivaled by any of his actor-producer peers.
The China Syndrome (1979), which he also produced, was the story of an iron-willed (Jane Fonda) female reporter's attempts to expose the dangerous conditions of a nuclear reactor cast Douglas as a cameraman. While it was a taut and earnest drama, much of its publicity came from the real-life Three Mile Island drama that eerily occurred the week of the movie's release.
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