A groundbreaking portrait of one of Hollywood’s most successful stars, from critically acclaimed and bestselling biographer Marc Eliot Through determination, inventiveness, and charisma, Michael Douglas emerged from the long shadow cast by his movie-legend father, Kirk Douglas, to become his own man and one of the film industry’s most formidable players. Overcoming the curse of failure that haunts the sons and daughters of Hollywood celebrities, Michael became a sensation when he successfully brought One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, starring his friend Jack Nicholson, to the screen after numerous setbacks, including his father’s own failed attempts to make it happen. This 1975 box-office phenomenon won Michael his first Oscar (the film won five total, including Best Picture), an award Kirk hadn’t won at the time, and solidified the turbulent, competitive father-son relationship that would shape Michael’s career and personal life. In the decades that followed, Michael established a reputation for taking chances on new talent and projects by producing and starring in the hugely successful Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile movies, while cultivating a multifaceted acting persona--edgy, rebellious, and a little dark--in such films as Wall Street, Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, and Disclosure. Yet as his career thrived, Michael’s personal life floundered, with an unhappy and tumultuous first marriage, rumors of infidelity (especially with leading ladies such as Kathleen Turner), and a headline-grabbing stint in rehab. Rocked by a series of tragedies, including Kirk’s strokes, his son Cameron’s incarceration, and his own fight against throat cancer, Michael has emerged triumphant, healthy, and happy in his marriage to Catherine Zeta-Jones, a Welsh actress twenty-five years his junior, and their new young family. In Michael Douglas, Marc Eliot brings into sharp focus this incredible career, complicated personal life, and legendary Hollywood family. Eliot’s fascinating portrait of the lows and remarkable highs in Michael’s life--including the thorny yet influential relationship with his father--breaks boundaries in understanding the life and work of a true American film star....

ldquo;Loaded with juicy tidbits...entertaining.” -Macleans

Autorentext

MARC ELIOT is the New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen books on popular culture, among them the highly acclaimed biographies Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood, and Steve McQueen. He divides his time among the east and west coasts, and Asia.

Klappentext

A groundbreaking portrait of one of Hollywood's most successful stars, from critically acclaimed and bestselling biographer Marc Eliot

Through determination, inventiveness, and charisma, Michael Douglas emerged from the long shadow cast by his movie-legend father, Kirk Douglas, to become his own man and one of the film industry's most formidable players.

Overcoming the curse of failure that haunts the sons and daughters of Hollywood celebrities, Michael became a sensation when he successfully brought One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, starring his friend Jack Nicholson, to the screen after numerous setbacks, including his father's own failed attempts to make it happen. This 1975 box-office phenomenon won Michael his first Oscar (the film won five total, including Best Picture), an award Kirk hadn't won at the time, and solidified the turbulent, competitive father-son relationship that would shape Michael's career and personal life.

In the decades that followed, Michael established a reputation for taking chances on new talent and projects by producing and starring in the hugely successful Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile movies, while cultivating a multifaceted acting persona-edgy, rebellious, and a little dark-in such films as Wall Street, Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, and Disclosure.

Yet as his career thrived, Michael's personal life floundered, with an unhappy and tumultuous first marriage, rumors of infidelity (especially with leading ladies such as Kathleen Turner), and a headline-grabbing stint in rehab. Rocked by a series of tragedies, including Kirk's strokes, his son Cameron's incarceration, and his own fight against throat cancer, Michael has emerged triumphant, healthy, and happy in his marriage to Catherine Zeta-Jones, a Welsh actress twenty-five years his junior, and their new young family.

In Michael Douglas, Marc Eliot brings into sharp focus this incredible career, complicated personal life, and legendary Hollywood family. Eliot's fascinating portrait of the lows and remarkable highs in Michael's life-including the thorny yet influential relationship with his father-breaks boundaries in understanding the life and work of a true American film star.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

As an actor, it was really intimidating watching my father because his personality, his presence was so strong and so dynamic that, forget acting, you just didn’t even know how to be a man.

--Michael Douglas

Michael K. Douglas inherited more than his famous father’s dirty blond hair and familiar face. He inherited his freedom. Kirk, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, was born in Amsterdam, New York. Herschel Danielovitch, a tailor, had fled Moscow in 1908 for Belarus, like so many Jews did under the threat of endless Cossack-led pogroms and conscription that forced them to fight for the tsar in the Russo-Japanese War. Two years later, taking his girlfriend, Bryna Sanglel, a baker, with him, he left Belarus in 1910 bound for America’s promise of safety and rebirth. They passed through Ellis Island, the gateway to the New World, and settled in upstate New York, where that same year they married and started a family.

By 1924 they had seven children, six girls and one boy: Pesha (born 1910), Kaleh (1912), Tamara (1914), Issur (1916), twins Hashka and Siffra (1918), and Rachel (1924). Issur would later change his name from Issur Danielovitch to the more American (and less Jewish) Kirk Douglas.

Herschel was not a warm man. He liked to eat by himself in restaurants, or alone late at night at the kitchen table when everyone else was already in bed. When not plying his rag trade on the streets of Amsterdam, he would spend hours in town, drinking at the local saloon.

Occasionally he would take Issur with him on the rag route, to show him how much hard work it took to put food on the family table. Issur was a quick learner but not especially ambitious. To help feed the family he preferred to break into neighbors’ houses and steal food from their kitchens.

Sometimes, to supplement what he earned from the rag business, Herschel sold fruits and vegetables off a cart. Issur used to steal from him, too, and then bring the food home to the family. Sometimes he would keep a potato or two for himself and roast them in the basement, until one time he “accidentally” burned the house down. As Kirk recalls in his memoirs, “I have always suspected that this was . . . subconscious arson. I really wanted to destroy the whole house. There was an awful lot of rage churning around inside me . . . my mother was always saying, ‘Don’t be like your father. . . .’ That made me angry. Who should I be like? My mother? My sisters?”

Herschel was a bad drinker, and since the only other person in the house who wasn’t female was Issur, he received the brunt of his father’s frustrations via regular beatings. If he angered Issur to the point where he wanted to burn down the house, he also managed to toughen him up, and it was that intense combination of anger and toughness, along…