Michael Kirk Douglas was born on September 25, 1944, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He is an American actor and film producer. He is the elder son of actor Kirk Douglas and actress Diana Dill.

Michael Douglas earned his Bachelor of Arts in drama from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His early acting roles included film, stage, and television productions. He first achieved prominence for his performance in the ABC police procedural television series The Streets of San Francisco, for which he received three consecutive Emmy Award nominations.

In 1975, Michael Douglas produced One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, having acquired the rights to the Ken Kesey novel from his father. The film received critical and popular acclaim and won the Academy Award for Best Picture, earning Douglas his first Oscar as one of the film's producers.

Michael Douglas went on to produce films including The China Syndrome and Romancing the Stone, for which he received the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. He received critical acclaim for his portrayal of Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Other notable roles include Fatal Attraction, The War of the Roses, Basic Instinct, Falling Down, The American President, The Game, Traffic, and Wonder Boys. In 2013, for his portrayal of Liberace in the HBO film Behind the Candelabra, he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie.

He starred as an aging acting coach in the Netflix comedy series The Kominsky Method, for which he won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy. He has portrayed Hank Pym in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, beginning with Ant-Man.

Michael Douglas has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the AFI Life Achievement Award.

He has been married twice, first to Diandra Luker from 1977 to 1995, with whom he has one son, Cameron. In 2000, he married actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, and they have two children, Dylan and Carys.

He sits on the board of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and is an honorary board member of the anti-war grant-making foundation Ploughshares Fund. He was appointed as a United Nations Messenger of Peace in 1998.