(Photo by Paramount/courtesy Everett Collection)

All Michael Douglas Movies Ranked

Three ways to start a movie star career: Have a famous actor father, produce a Best Picture winner, or be in a hit TV series for a while before making the leap. Uh, check, check, and check for Michael Douglas, son of Kirk, producer of One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest, and star of early ’70s procedural The Streets of San Francisco.

So by the time San Francisco ended in ’77, Douglas was ready to get plastered all over the silver screen, starring in Michael Crichton’s Coma. He put out a few more like-minded high-stakes adult thrillers (The China Syndrome, The Star Chamber) before being made as an ’80s man with Romancing the Stone. The cheeky globe-trotting adventure film, directed by Robert Zemeckis and co-starring Kathleen Turner, turned him into a sex symbol, with all the women (Fatal Attraction), money (Wall Street, a Best Actor Oscar winner), and power (Black Rain) that implies.

It all came to a head in the ’90s with the supremely watchable sleaze that is Basic Instinct, which left mouths wide open, among other things. Other movies of the decade, like Falling Down and David Fincher’s The Game, are still watched today, especially for their exploration of broken-down masculinity and power.

Douglas got another taste of Best Picture gold with 2000’s Traffic (nominated, but struck down by Gladiator). This marked Douglas’ first collaboration with director Steven Soderbergh: The two would reunite for Haywire and Behind the Candelabra. He was brought into the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the famous Dr. Hank Pym for Ant-Man, a role he reprised for the Wasp and Quantumania sequels. Now, we’re ranking all Michael Douglas movies by Tomatometer! —Alex Vo