One Helluva Ride

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.

Michael Douglas  is a legendary actor and producer. Throughout his career, he has received two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, five Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. He was honored with the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009, two Honorary Cesars in 1998 and 2016, a Film Society at Lincoln Center Gala Tribute in 2010, a Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2004, and a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2018. Douglas has also served for twenty-seven years as a United Nations Messenger of Peace.

Shane Salerno is a New York Times bestselling author, and the co-screenwriter of Avatar: The Way of Water, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Armageddon and Savages, among others. His company, The Story Factory, has been involved in more than thirty New York Times bestsellers. He has known Michael Douglas for twenty-five years.

Michael Fleming Jr is Editor at Large for Deadline after serving a decade as Co-Editor in Chief. He spent 20 years at Variety as a film reporter.