Michael Douglas

Bought the film rights to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest from his father Kirk Douglas, who had spent a decade failing to get it made, and produced the 1975 film himself; it won the Academy Award for Best Picture. He went on to build his own acting career on morally compromised characters, winning the Best Actor Oscar as corporate raider Gordon Gekko in Wall Street (1987) and later an Emmy for playing Liberace in Behind the Candelabra — a range that runs from producer's instinct to a willingness to play unlikeable men well.