Hollywood acting legend plots Welsh speaking tour date

Nation Cymru staff

A living Hollywood legend is set to appear live on stage in Wales this autumn, giving the full and uncensored account of a remarkable life on and off screen that has spanned an extraordinary eight decades.

Michael Kirk Douglas is one of the world’s most recognisable actors and film producers, and has been married to actress Catherine Zeta-Jones since 2000.

This October, he is set to speak for almost two hours about his fascinating life in one of only two UK appearances at Swansea Building Society Arena, discussing the inspiration behind One Helluva Ride – a raw, career-sweeping memoir, in which he tells the unfiltered story of his life.

He said: “This book is about where I came from, what I fought against, and what I chose for myself. Fame can blur the truth; this is my attempt to bring it back into focus.”

Douglas has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Honorary Palme d’Or and the AFI Life Achievement Award.

Like the book itself, the talk – also titled One Helluva Ride – will discuss Douglas’s childhood and complicated relationship with his father, tracing his path to success with news-breaking behind-the-scenes stories of his rise to fame.

Yet as Douglas’s fame rose, so did his personal struggles, and here for the first time is the full, candid story of the challenges he and his family faced, from affairs with some of the most celebrated actresses in Hollywood, his own serious drug addiction which threaten to destroy his first marriage and career, the heartbreaking battle to save his son from a terrible drug addiction that sent him to federal prison at thirty-one years old, and an against-all-odds battle with stage four cancer.

His love affair with Oscar winner Catherine Zeta Jones was initially dismissed as just another Hollywood relationship, but they proved the skeptics wrong about their age gap and stayed together through relationship troubles, health issues, tabloid gossip and are still going strong after twenty-five years of marriage.

The elder son of Kirk Douglas and Diana Dill, Douglas earned his Bachelor of Arts in drama from the University of California, Santa Barbara and went on to star in and produce some of Hollywood’s most iconic movies of the 70s, 80s and 90s. He produced One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), having acquired the rights to the novel from his father and later earned the Academy Award for Best Picture as a producer. Douglas won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street (1987), a role which he reprised in the sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010). Other notable roles include in The China Syndrome (1979), Romancing the Stone (1984), The Jewel of the Nile (1985), Fatal Attraction (1987), The War of the Roses (1989), Basic Instinct (1992), Falling Down (1993), The American President (1995), The Game (1997), Traffic (2000), Wonder Boys (2000), and Solitary Man (2009).

While Douglas has a close personal connection to Wales through his marriage to Catherine Zeta-Jones, frequently visitsing Swansea and the Mumbles to see family and play golf, he has noted he prefers to keep a “healthy distance” rather than move to the nation permanently.

One Helluva Ride

The event listing reads: “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.

“Michael Douglas finally gives the full and uncensored account of a remarkable life that has spanned an extraordinary eight decades. He will reveal 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.”

“Here, for the first time live on stage with a special guest host, he recounts the 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 for years; and his against-all-odds battle with stage IV cancer.

“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 One Helluva Ride takes place at Swansea Building Society Arena on Monday 26 October. More information and tickets available here.

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