Michael Douglas, Smiling Now

Michael Douglas never smiled as a baby, he confesses in A&E;’s latest “One on One With David Frost” special. Nearly 57 years later, things have changed.

Douglas, who won an Oscar for producing his first film, 1975’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” then snagged another for playing the slithery tycoon Gordon Gekko in 1987’s “Wall Street,” seems happier than ever. And why not: Douglas earned acclaim for last year’s “Traffic” and “Wonder Boys,” and he and his wife, the Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, have a 1-year-old boy.

From this interview at his villa on the north shore of the Spanish island of Mallorca, it appears that the son of Kirk Douglas has long had luck on his side. You have to hate him.

But he comes across as so relaxed and self-deprecating that you have to like him too. His secret to becoming “The American President”? “The right amount of shoulder padding.” Gekko’s legacy: a parade of sloshed investment bankers who approach Douglas at restaurants to remind him, “Greed is good,” and inevitably add, “You’re the reason I got into this business.”

Though meticulous as ever, Frost has the tone of an authorized biographer, never delving. There are no revelations here to make anyone forget his landmark sessions with Richard Nixon.

But from small moments a portrait emerges. At times, we meet the Douglas whose mom remembered him as a “serious and reflective” infant. In an eerie exchange, he discusses how fortunate young Americans are to have never known the ravages of war--the show was taped before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. On the question of faith, Douglas says, “I keep looking around the world and the most barbaric acts that I see seem to be in the name of religions.”

He may be living out a fantasy, but here is a man rooted in the real world.

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“One on One With David Frost” features actor Michael Douglas, tonight at 9 on A&E.;