Age: 81
male
Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is a retired 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, 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. His early acting roles included film, stage, and television productions. Douglas 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, 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. Douglas went on to produce films including The China Syndrome (1979) and Romancing the Stone (1984), for which he received the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture—Musical or Comedy, and The Jewel of the Nile (1985). Douglas received critical acclaim for his portrayal of Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor (a role he reprised in the sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps in 2010). Other notable roles include in Fatal Attraction (1987), The War of the Roses (1989), Basic Instinct (1992), Falling Down (1993), The American President (1995), The Game (1997), Traffic (2000), and Wonder Boys (2000). 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. Douglas starred as an ageing acting coach in the Netflix comedy series The Kominsky Method (2018–2021), for which he won a Golden Globe Award for Best ctor—television series musical or omedy. He has portrayed Hank Pym in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, beginning with Ant-Man (2015). 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. In July 2025, Douglas said that he was largely retired from acting, saying "I realized I had to stop [...] I did not want to be one of those people who dropped dead on the set". He added that while he was attached to one additional project and did not fully rule out future projects "if something special came up", he had no plans to work regularly again.
As a boy, John Dolittle displays an ability to talk to and understand animals, starting with his pet dog. His behavior disturbs his father Archer, who hires a local minister to perform an exorcism on his son, but after John's dog attacks him, Archer sends her to the pound. John eventually forgets he can talk to animals. As an adult, John is a doctor and surgeon living in San Francisco. He is happily married to his wife Lisa, and has two daughters, typical teenager Charisse, and nerdy Maya, who has a pet guinea pig named Rodney, and what she thinks is a swan egg, which she hopes will bond with her upon hatching. A large medical company owned by Mr. Calloway seeks to buy John's practice, a deal which his colleagues Mark Weller and Gene Reiss are enthusiastic about. John's family goes on vacation, but he must return to work to see a patient, and then pick up Rodney. He nearly hits a dog, which gets up and angrily shouts at him in English. The next day, Rodney starts talking to John, who has no memory of his gift, and thinks he is having a mental breakdown. John has a CT scan after animals start asking for favors when he helps a wounded owl, and he then unwittingly adopts the dog he ran over, eventually naming him Lucky. John starts secretly helping various animals, including a suicidal circus tiger named Jake, who feels great cerebral pain. Through all this, John begins learning to re-appreciate his gift, at one point confiding to both Lucky and Mark that he has never felt excited about his work in years. However, Lisa and Mark catch him performing CPR on a rat, and have him institutionalized. Believing his gift is a hindrance, John rejects all abnormality in his life and returns to work, but in doing so, ostracizes Maya as well, who comes to believe he doesn’t like her. Maya admits to Archer that she liked the idea of her father talking to animals. John eavesdrops on the conversation and has a change of heart. John admits to Maya that he does like her for who she is, and encourages her to continue being what she wants to be. John then apologizes to Lucky, and together, they steal Jake from the circus to perform surgery on him. Mark and Gene catch John, but Gene tires of the former’s opportunistic attitude and helps John. When Jake is exposed to the party for the buyout, John calmly goes on with the operation. Archer reveals to Lisa that John's gift is real, encouraging her to venture into the operating theatre and keep Jake calm whilst her husband and Gene remove the cause of Jake’s pain, saving Jake's life. Calloway is impressed with John's talent, but he declines the deal. John becomes both a doctor and a veterinarian, embracing his ability to talk to animals. In the film's final scenes, Maya's egg hatches, but is revealed to be a baby alligator, and John and Lucky are shown walking to the circus and talking with each other.
