Michael Douglas

Douglas was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the first child of actors Kirk Douglas (1916–2020) and Diana Dill (1923–2015). His parents met at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. His father was Jewish and was born Issur Danielovitch. Michael's paternal grandparents were emigrants from Chavusy in the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus). His mother was from Devonshire Parish, Bermuda, and had English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, French, Belgian, and Dutch ancestry. Douglas' uncle was politician Sir Nicholas Bayard Dill, and Douglas' maternal grandfather, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Melville Dill, served as Attorney General of Bermuda, as a Member of the Parliament of Bermuda (MCP), and as commanding officer of the Bermuda Militia Artillery. Douglas is a US citizen by birth in the United States and has Bermudian Status from his mother's birth in Bermuda. His great-grandfather, Thomas Newbold Dill (1837–1910), was a merchant, an MCP for Devonshire Parish from 1868 to 1888, a member of the legislative council and an assistant justice from 1888, mayor of the City of Hamilton from 1891 to 1897, served on numerous committees and boards, and was a member of the Devonshire Church (Church of England) and Devonshire Parish vestries. Thomas Newbold Dill's father, another Thomas Melville Dill, was a sea captain who took the Bermudian-built barque Sir George F. Seymour from Bermuda to Ireland in thirteen days in March 1858, but lost his master's certificate after the wreck of the Bermudian-built Cedrine on the Isle of Wight while returning the last convict laborers from the Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda to Britain in 1863. The current (installed on 29 May 2013) Bishop of Bermuda, the Right Reverend Nicholas Dill, is a cousin of Michael Douglas. Douglas has a younger brother, Joel Douglas (born 1947), and two paternal half-brothers, Peter Douglas (born 1955) and Eric Douglas (1958–2004), from stepmother Anne Buydens. Douglas attended The Allen-Stevenson School in New York City, Eaglebrook School in Deerfield, Massachusetts, and The Choate Preparatory School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut. He received his B.A. in dramatic art from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1968, where he was also the honorary president of the UCSB Alumni Association. He studied acting with Wynn Handman at The American Place Theatre in New York City.