The most challenging TV show of Michael Douglas’ career: “I’ve never worked harder”
As far as the realms of the Hollywood icon go, it’s hard to look beyond the impact of Michael Douglas as one of American cinema’s most enduring icons. Throughout his career, Douglas has shown his unrivalled versatility and prowess as an actor, which has afforded him a genuinely immovable legacy.
The two-time Academy Award winner has flexed his performative muscles in some of the most memorable movie moments of the last five decades, including in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, Fatal Attraction and Traffic. As a producer, Douglas has also made key contributions to American cinema, such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The China Syndrome.
Like any actor, though, and even with a famous acting father in the shape of Kirk Douglas, the New Jersey-born star hasn’t always had it completely easy, and he once spoke of a difficult moment early in his career that showed him the importance of working hard and powering through one’s most challenging periods.
Douglas first achieved prominence in the public eye with the ABC police procedural TV series The Streets of San Francisco, which ran on the network for five seasons between 1972 and 1977. Douglas, who starred in the show alongside Karl Malden as one of two San Francisco homicide inspectors, left at the beginning of its final season, being replaced by Richard Hatch for the rest of its airtime.
Still, The Streets of San Francisco provided Douglas with his first taste of acting success. In an interview with The Guardian, Douglas once explained how he came to take on the job and how it ended up being one of the most challenging roles he’d ever taken on, one that came right at the beginning of his overall success.
“Well… it was a job,” Douglas noted. “It was early in my career; I didn’t have a whole lot of options.” The actor went on to explain that he had been an off-Broadway actor in New York before “a CBS playhouse on television” eventually brought him to Hollywood, where “a couple of unsuccessful movies” followed.
Before long, Douglas found himself in the world of “episodic television”. He was offered The Streets of San Francisco as an entire season of 26 hour-long episodes by producer Quinn Martin, and after accepting, Douglas slowly began to establish himself as a household name, following in the footsteps of his iconic acting father.
Working with Karl Malden, “a wonderful actor befriended by Marlon Brando,” who played Lt Mike Stone opposite Douglas’ Inspector Steve Keller, would play significance in Douglas’ life as he went on to refer to his co-star as a “mentor in my life”. Malden had won the Academy Award for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ in the 1951 film version of A Streetcar Named Desire, so he had much to pass on to the young Douglas.
Douglas ended up admitting that The Streets of San Francisco was “the greatest opportunity I ever had, but also the hardest.” The production schedule saw the actor work for “14 hours a day, six days a week, for eight and a half months.” While he had “never worked harder”, he found the entire experience vital in teaching him about the realities of “acting and producing”, and he would always cherish it as a “tremendous opportunity.”