Michael Douglas Corporate Shark

"For an actor, it's great fun to play one of these hungry white sharks. Audiences love to hate them," Michael Douglas once said. He should know. For more than three decades he has fashioned a career out of playing conniving characters. His heartless businessmen, cheating husbands, and cold-blooded psychopaths turned being the bad guy into an art form.

With his gravelly voice and reptilian stare, Douglas wields his signature aristocratic elegance as a weapon, masterfully sculpting his characters into emotionally distant, white-collar villains. Controlled anger bubbles beneath their designer suits. Powerful rage smolders inside their luxury sedans. Whether his character is committing corporate crimes or cheating on his wife, the actor blends avaricious desire with primal lust in his performances to create deeply flawed yet deliciously wicked, self-centered scoundrels.

Though he launched his career by playing good-guy inspector Steve Keller in The Streets of San Francisco and action hero Jack T. Colton in Romancing the Stone, it was his turn as philandering lawyer Dan Gallagher in Fatal Attraction that gained him superstardom and, depending on whom you ask, sex symbol status. Like most Douglas characters, Gallagher couldn't resist temptation. Neither could Det. Nick Curran, the immoral officer the actor depicts in Basic Instinct. Though the characters have starkly different circumstances, the actor pulls from his bank of cocky cynicism and animalistic sexuality to deliver a potent performance. Though his character's Achilles' heel proves once again to be his lust, he manages to make Curran sympathetic, despite his overbearing masculinity, which makes some female viewers cringe. But, as usual, Douglas is unapologetic for these unlikeable tendencies.

If women love to hate him in Basic Instinct, they are reluctant to trust his character, Tom Sanders, in the tepid thriller Disclosure. In the film, an ex-girlfriend (Demi Moore) makes a play for Sanders, who partially succumbs to her advances before wising up. He then finds himself being accused of sexual harassment, with no one totally believing his side of the story, even his wife. The audience can relate: Based on Douglas' previous performances, who would believe Sanders wasn't an adulterer?

He has cornered the market on ruthless investment banker roles. His cold-hearted Gordon Gekko in Wall Street earned him an Academy Award for Best Actor. His icy deliveries of lines such as "Greed is good" and "If you need a friend, get a dog" made a powerful statement about capitalism that wouldn't have been nearly as potent without the actor's authority.

He reprised the ruthless businessman role for The Perfect Murder, in which he plays a cunning millionaire who hires his wife's lover to bludgeon her to death. As he listens to the struggle over the phone, Douglas smiles with a despicable smugness that leaves us practically rooting for the murder. In The Game, he manages to inject heart into a loveless investment banker as he rediscovers his ability to feel. The veteran actor even conveys genuine sadness and frustration in his violently unstable character in Falling Down, forcing us to empathize with his destructive rampage.

Though he has ditched these unsavory roles lately for comedic turns, true fans can't help but crave the old Douglas. But given his past statements, he's sure to reappear. After all, this is the guy who once said, "Actresses have more fear of being disliked. I, on the other hand, revel in it."