Actor. Born Michael Douglas, on September 9, 1951, in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania. Intense, mercurial lead with a flair for dark comedy. The youngest of seven children, he dropped out after two years from Kent State University, where he majored in speech. For a while, he bummed around Pittsburgh, then began performing in local coffeehouses, supplementing his income by driving a cab and an ice-cream truck. In 1972 he joined the technical crew of the city's Public Television station, WQED, and three years later moved to Los Angeles in search of a show business career. He started out with the improvisational Second City group, then wrote comedy material and performed in such TV series as "All's Fair" (1977), "Working Stiffs" (1979), and "Report to Murphy" (1982). But it was only in the early 80's, when he began appearing in feature films, that he found his path to success. At first attracting attention in routine comic parts, he was eventually able to demonstrate a capacity for a widening range of roles. In 1988 he was named Best Actor by the National Society of Film Critics for his whimsical portrait of a mischievous ghoul in Beetlejuice and for his utterly believable portrayal of a drug addict in Clean and Sober. In the following year he achieved superstardom with a brooding interpretation of the title role in Batman. He turned in a bizarre character performance as Dogberry in Kenneth Branagh's "Much Ado About Nothing" (1993). He married actress Caroline MacWilliams in 1982. They separated in 1988 but reunited in 1989.
