The 7 Best Michael Douglas Movies

Michael Douglas is an actor and producer you probably know already. The son of legendary actor and filmmaker Kirk Douglas, Michael has won numerous awards, including two Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, an Honorary Palme d'Or, and an AFI Life Achievement Award.

He recently turned 82. Douglas won his first Oscar as a producer for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. His acting career has typically focused on powerful men losing their grip, as Roger Ebert noted in a review of The Game.

Douglas consistently picks scripts that put a confident man under pressure and leave the outcome uncertain. Let's look at some of his best roles today.

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Romancing the Stone

Romance novelist Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) flies to Colombia with a treasure map to ransom her kidnapped sister. She ends up depending on Jack Colton (Douglas), a scruffy American, as smugglers and soldiers give chase.

Douglas bought Diane Thomas' first screenplay, telling Variety at the time, "I remember being criticized for paying so much money for a first-time screenwriter. I said, 'Well, I don't care if it was the first time or the tenth time, if the material is good, then the material finds its own value. '"

It was a breakout role for Douglas as a leading man.

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Fatal Attraction

Manhattan lawyer Dan Gallagher (Douglas) has a weekend affair with book editor Alex Forrest (Glenn Close). When he tries to end it, Alex… uh, doesn't take it well. This is one of the most famous in the psychosexual thriller genre.

Reflecting on the role later, Close told CBS News, "I would read that script totally differently. The astounding thing was that in my research for Fatal Attraction I talked to two psychiatrists. Never did a mental disorder come up. Never did the possibility of that come up. That, of course, would be the first thing I would think of now."

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Wall Street

In this 1987 drama, young broker Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) gets into corporate raider Gordon Gekko's (Douglas) inner circle by feeding him inside information. But of course, this greed doesn't lead him down the path he expected.

"Well, I was always shocked when so many people who saw Wall Street said that I [Gekko] was the person who influenced them and inspired them to go into investment banking," Douglas told City A.M. in 2011. "I'd say to people, 'Well, I was the villain,' and they would say, 'No, no, no,' they didn't see me that way, so it was all very seductive, I guess."

At the 2026 TCM Classic Film Festival, Douglas said that Oliver Stone told him he looked like he'd never acted before. Douglas said Stone did it on purpose to push him harder (via Variety).

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Basic Instinct

What is it with Douglas and his erotic thrillers? In this one, he plays detective Nick Curran, who investigates an ice-pick murder. The prime suspect is crime novelist Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone), whose latest book describes the killing. Of course he falls for her anyway.

Douglas and director Paul Verhoeven had some trouble casting the female lead, according to Entertainment Weekly (via Yahoo! Entertainment).

"We wanted to hit something, and we had a good script, and we had a fabulous actress in Sharon. She was just perfect for the role," Douglas said. "Again, it was very funny. We were auditioning, trying to find the right actress for the part, and Paul knew there was going to be a lot of active sex—there is in a lot of his films. So when he would meet these actresses, he would always preface it by saying, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there'll be nudity. Yeah, nudity... Lots of nudity.' I said, 'Paul, you don't have to say that.'"

Turns out casting a femme fatale is not easy.

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The Game

Wealthy investment banker Nicholas Van Orton (Douglas) gets an unusual birthday gift from his estranged brother (Sean Penn)—entry into a "game" run by a mysterious company. But what is real and what is the game? And how does he win?

This is an early David Fincher labyrinth we love around here. He talks about finding the ending in the film's commentary.

"What if we have a guy who's Scrooge who's just dead, who doesn't have anybody in his life," Fincher said, "and back into his life comes somebody who should mean something to him, but he's holding off at a distance, and that person gives him this experience."

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Wonder Boys

Pittsburgh writing professor Grady Tripp (Douglas) hasn't followed up his acclaimed first novel in years. His wife leaves him, and his married lover (Frances McDormand) tells him she's pregnant. His editor (Robert Downey Jr.) arrives wanting the book, while a troubled student (Tobey Maguire) adds to the drama.

This is an overlooked gem, based on a book written by Michael Chabon.

Director Curtis Hanson told The Globe and Mail:

"Had it just been about a writer going through some creative problems, I wouldn't have been interested, quite frankly, in the story. But my identification with the lead character, Grady Tripp, is much deeper than that, because that's just one aspect of his life where he's not making choices. He's just been letting things happen, self-medicating with pot and drifting along. And yet, there's this thing building up inside him: frustration, hunger, yearning, et cetera, all of which I identify with."

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Traffic

Three interlocking stories follow the drug trade across the U.S.-Mexico border. Douglas plays Robert Wakefield, an Ohio judge newly appointed as the nation's drug czar, who learns that his teenage daughter is addicted.

Steven Soderbergh told Salon why he chose to do the movie.

“There’s actually a passage in ‘Getting Away With It’ where I’m musing about drugs, wondering what they’re about and what role they have in our society. Clearly this was something I felt was worth addressing, but I had no idea what a film about that might be like. It wasn’t until I ran into Laura Bickford, the producer, and she mentioned that she had the rights to make the miniseries into a film. I thought, ‘Ah, that’s how you should do it.’”

Reflecting on the film later with Benicio del Toro, Douglas said, "Soderbergh is a very unique director in the fact that he's also the cameraman, and you probably only have one shot at it. He's the opposite of almost everybody" (via Variety).

What's your favorite Michael Douglas film?