A boy lost in the shadow of his father's legacy.
A gifted artist dismissed as just a “TV actor.”
A first-time film producer who stunned the world by winning an Oscar at 31.
A maverick who changed Hollywood and became a global movie star.
Hollywood icon Michael Douglas tells the unfiltered story of his life
for the first time.
“I spent a significant portion of my career playing some version of the
modern, flawed, American male. You’ll see from these pages that it wasn’t
exactly a stretch for me.”
Beginning with his fractured childhood and a complex relationship with
his superstar father, Kirk Douglas, Michael Douglas finally gives the full and
uncensored account of a remarkable life. One Helluva Ride reveals incredible
behind-the-scenes stories featuring a Who’s Who of Hollywood, many of them
never revealed before and some outrageously funny, with an unflinching honesty
about his sometimes bad-boy life.
Initially dismissed as just the handsome son of a legendary movie star,
at age thirty-one he shook up Hollywood when he won his first Oscar for
producing the five-time Academy Award-winning classic film One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest. Told he would never be more than a “TV actor,” he quit the hit
series The Streets of San Francisco to become an international movie star, with
a list of classic films that have grossed billions of dollars, winning a second
Oscar for his riveting performance as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street.
“I can’t think about my life without thinking of my movies,” Douglas
says, and he recounts his career through twelve of his most iconic films,
including One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The China Syndrome, Romancing the
Stone, Jewel of the Nile, Fatal Attraction, Wall Street, War of the Roses,
Basic Instinct, Falling Down, The American President, Traffic and Behind the
Candelabra. These movies not only
captured the cultural zeitgeist but often defined it.
Yet as Douglas's fame grew, so did his personal struggles. He recounts
the full, unfiltered story of his turbulent first marriage; infidelity and
affairs with some of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood; his own serious
struggle with alcohol, drugs and rehab; the heartbreaking fight to save his son
from an addiction that sent him to prison; and his against-all-odds battle with
stage IV cancer.
He saw Catherine Zeta Jones on a movie screen and instantly fell for
her. Their incredible love story transformed his life and proved all the
tabloids wrong, enduring after twenty-five years of marriage.
Father, son, husband, actor, producer, brother and friend. This is the
real, raw, deeply honest and vulnerable Michael Douglas you didn't know―until
now.
