Michael Douglas’ top grossing movies

Actor-producer Michael Douglas is the recipient of this year’s AFI Lifetime Achievement Award. And the Daily Variety offers a nice retrospective of Douglas’ top grossing movies. The list is as follows:

Fatal Attraction: $157M

Traffic: $124M

Basic Instinct: $118M

The War of the Roses: $84M

Disclosure: $83M

Romancing the Stone: $75M

A Perfect Murder: $68M

Jewel of the Nile: $66M

The American President: $60M

Not included are other notable movies including Coma, The China Syndrome, Wall Street, Black Rain, and Falling Down.

Looking at this list, three thing stand out to me: (1) Douglas has played some really interesting and wide-ranging roles. (2) Many of those roles are deeply flawed characters. (3) And apart from Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile, very few of the roles are those popcorn-movie, romanticized, mainstream ‘leading man’ type of thing.

In fact, it’s probably fair to say that Douglas is one of the handful of Hwood stars who isn’t afraid to play an anti-hero or a ‘negative’ Protagonist. 

What’s your favorite Michael Douglas role?

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