ROCHESTER, NY.- Academy Award winner and George Eastman Award recipient Michael Douglas is donating his personal collection of 35mm and 16mm prints to the George Eastman Museum. Douglas’s collection consists of 37 film prints, including more than thirty titles that star or were produced by Douglas over the course of his career.

“When Mr. Douglas visited the museum last spring to receive the George Eastman Award, he saw firsthand the work we are doing in film preservation,” said Bruce Barnes, Ron and Donna Fielding Director, George Eastman Museum. “He expressed appreciation and understanding of the long-term care the Moving Image Department staff expertly provide for our collection and felt confident that the Eastman Museum would ensure a safe archival environment for his films. This is an exciting addition to our prestigious cinema collection, and we are deeply grateful to Mr. Douglas for this generous gift.”

With nearly fifty years of experience in theatre, film, and television, Michael Douglas has brought to the screen some of the most memorable characters in modern Hollywood, including Gordon Gekko, the ruthless corporate raider in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street (1987), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. He made his film debut in Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), but it was his breakout role on the television series The Streets of San Francisco (1972–76) that put Douglas on the map. He branched into producing with the Academy Award–winning One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and since then has proven his skill for choosing projects that reflect changing trends and public concerns. Douglas has produced or acted in more than 75 motion picture films and television series, and has more than forty industry awards to his name, including two Academy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards.

“Few actors in contemporary cinema demonstrate a clear awareness of the importance of preserving their own work for posterity,” said Paolo Cherchi Usai, Senior Curator, Moving Image Department, George Eastman Museum. “By donating his films to the museum, Michael Douglas has sent a strong message to his peers. We hope that others will follow his outstanding example.”

The donation includes 35mm prints of, among many other films, The China Syndrome (1979), Romancing the Stone (1984), Fatal Attraction (1987), War of the Roses (1989), Basic Instinct (1992), Traffic (2000), and the two films that garnered him Academy Awards for producing and acting: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which won for Best Picture, and Wall Street.

In addition to caring for the prints, the museum will also screen them in the Dryden Theatre as part of its regular film exhibition program.