Romancing the movies

Douglas made a handful of movies before he became a TV star in the 1970s with the hit detective series The Streets of San Francisco,with Karl Malden. While working on Streets,he produced 1975s One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest,which won the best picture Oscar. He also won a best actor Oscar for 1987s Wall Street.

These days Douglas is still boyishly handsome,sporting the same scruffy,if grayer,hair. He and his second wife,Catherine Zeta-Jones,and their two young children,Dylan and Carys,live in Bermuda. Douglas spent most of his formative years in Connecticut with his mother,actress Diana Dill,and his stepfather. I was very fortunate that my mother remarried a wonderful guy,and Kirk is the first guy to acknowledge that, he says. I would come and visit him,but I missed some of that craziness.

Douglas says his priorities have changed since marrying Zeta-Jones and the birth of his two young childrenhe also has a 30-year-old son,actor Cameron Douglas,from his first marriage. Though he continues to workhe had a supporting role in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past; starring roles in two upcoming dramas,Beyond a Reasonable Doubt and Solitary Man; and is scheduled to reunite with director Oliver Stone on the sequel to Wall StreetDouglas is pacing his projects. His family comes first now. The AFI award makes me think how old I will be when my daughter is 18, he said.

Despite his backgroundor perhaps because of itDouglas has remained steadfastly non-Hollywood. He resided in Santa Barbara,90 miles northwest of Los Angeles,for years before moving to Bermuda,where his mother was born.

Though Douglas made his starring film debut 40 years ago in the now-forgotten drama Hail,Hero!,he really didnt hit his stride as a feature actor until his turn as a dashing adventurer in Romancing the Stone. When you have such an icon for your father,it takes you time to find your own identity,to feel comfortable in your own skin, he said. When he did start to play darker characters in 1987,Douglas hit his strideas the slick tycoon Gordon Gekko in Wall Street,as the happily married man who strays with deadly consequences in Fatal Attraction,as an average guy pushed over the edge by urban woes in Falling Down and as the cop who has an affair with a murderous Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct.

He won an Oscar for 1987s Wall Street and bared more than his soul in controversial thrillers like 1987s Fatal Attraction and 1992s Basic Instinct. He co-starred in everything from political dramas The China Syndrome with Jane Fonda to action comedy Romancing the Stone with Kathleen Turner.