Morning Man Classic: Michael Douglas!

Michael Douglas, who turns 80 today, first landed on my radar when I was a kid watching him on the 70s cop series The Streets of San Francisco.

I thought he was incredibly cool and cute as a cop named Steve Keller opposite Karl Malden and was heartbroken when he left the show after five seasons. But he had a good reason: he produced One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest and won a best picture Oscar for it.

His career in movies as a leading man took longer to catch fire but I still watched everything he was in post-Streets including Coma, Running, The Star Chamber, It’s My Turn and The China Syndrome.

It was 1984′s Romancing the Stone that introduced us to the superstar Michael Douglas. He’d never looked sexier on screen and he and Kathleen Turner had all kinds of sizzling chemistry. They paired up again in the sequel Jewel of the Nile then in the drama War of the Roses.

By the time Roses came along in 1989, Michael was coming off of the best one-two punch of his career starring opposite Glenn Close as a cheating hubby in Fatal Attraction and winning the best actor Oscar for his portrayal of Gordon Gekko in Wall Street.

A few years later, Michael was on top again this time opposite Sharon Stone in the blockbuster sexual thriller Basic Instinct. Many memorable films have followed since that heady peak period including Disclosure, The American President, Falling Down, The Wonder Boys, A Perfect Murder and Traffic.

Michael also starred opposite his dad, Kirk Douglas, in the 2003 film It Runs in the Family and got rave reviews for his performance in 2010′s Solitary Man and revived the role of Gekko in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

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 aging acting coach in the Netflix comedy series The Kominsky Method (2018–2021), 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 (2015) and earlier this year starred in the Apple TV series Franklin portraying Benjamin Franklin.