Academy Award-winning actor and producer Michael Douglas will be honored with two prestigious Boston-area awards next month. On Wednesday, November 28 he will receive the Bette Davis Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bette Davis Foundation, and the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University will present an exhibition of his archive. The following evening, on Thursday, November 29 the Coolidge Corner Theatre will honor Douglas with the Coolidge Award, recognizing his remarkable career and cultural legacy.
On Wednesday at Boston University, the Bette Davis Foundation and the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center will host a reception and award ceremony in tribute to Michael Douglas. After being presented with the Bette Davis Lifetime Achievement Award, Mr. Douglas will participate in a moderated conversation about his life and career. An exhibition of Mr. Douglas’ archive will be on view during the reception and program.
On Thursday at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, Mr. Douglas will participate in an onstage conversation, followed by the presentation of the Coolidge Award in the theater’s authentically restored Art Deco Moviehouse. The Coolidge will host an afternoon screening of Wonder Boys, also on November 29. Following the Wonder Boys screening, Douglas will participate in an audience Q&A to discuss the sleeper classic, directed by Curtis Hanson and featuring stunning performances from Douglas along with co-stars Tobey Maguire, Katie Holmes, Francis McDormand, and Robert Downey Jr. The film also spotlights the Oscar-winning song “Things Have Changed” by Bob Dylan and is based on the novel of the same name by Michael Chabon.
Selected screenings from Michael Douglas’s filmography will be scheduled in the weeks following the Coolidge Award event. Details about the program and schedule will be announced in the coming weeks.
An actor and producer with fifty years of experience in theatre, film, and television, Michael Douglas has made an indelible mark on American film culture. After achieving success as an actor on the popular TV series The Streets of San Francisco (1972 - 76), he branched out into independent film production with the Academy Award-winning One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. In subsequent years, he achieved international stardom and critical acclaim for films such as The China Syndrome (1979) and Romancing the Stone (1984), both of which he also produced; Wall Street (1987), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his iconic portrayal of Gordon Gekko; the smash hits Fatal Attraction (1987) and Basic Instinct (1992); Falling Down (1993); The American President (1995); The Game (1997); Traffic (2000); Wonder Boys (2000); the HBO film Behind the Candelabra (2013), for which he won the SAG, Emmy, and Golden Globe Awards for his portrayal of the famed entertainer Liberace; and the Marvel hits Ant-Man (2015) and Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018). In November 2018, he will appear in the new Netflix series The Kominsky Method, co-starring Alan Arkin.
In addition to his dynamic acting career, Michael Douglas is a generous philanthropist, advocating for nuclear disarmament on the board of Ploughshares Fund and as a United Nations Messenger of Peace. His “Michael Douglas & Friends” Celebrity Golf Event has raised over $6 million for the Motion Picture and Television Fund, which offers assistance and care to those in the motion picture and television industries with limited or no resources. He supports his alma mater, UC Santa Barbara, where he helped fund the Center for Film, Television and New Media and established the Michael Douglas Foundation Visiting Artists Program for the Department of Theater and Dance. In 1999, he established the Michael Douglas Pediatric Brain Tumor Research Center at UC San Francisco.
Advance tickets to both events are available. Limited tickets to the public for the Bette Davis Lifetime Achievement Award will go on sale on Sunday, October 28. Tickets for the Coolidge Award and afternoon screening of Wonder Boys will go on sale at 11am on Monday, October 22.
