Six degrees

Hollywood A-lister Michael Douglas (above) hasn't let his battle against stage-four throat cancer keep him from promoting his latest film - in which he reprises his role as Wall Street anti-hero Gordon Gekko. With an 80 per cent chance of survival, the actor is openly optimistic, telling a chat show, 'The big thing you're worried about is it spreading ... It hasn't gone down. The expectations are good.' The disease has, however, cast doubt on the actor's next role, the lead in a biopic about Liberace ...

The flamboyant actor and pianist was the world's highest-paid entertainer from the 1950s to the 70s. Having denied his homosexuality in front of an unforgiving public, Liberace sued the Daily Mirror newspaper for describing him as '... a deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love', which apparently suggested he was gay. Wladziu Valentino Liberace has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, next to Walt Disney ...

A high-school dropout, Disney won 32 Academy Awards - more than any other individual. His reputation for being a technical innovator - he designed the pioneering multiplane camera - was probably the spark that ignited the long-held myth that, after his death in 1966, Disney's body was put, by his own request, into deep freeze by a company dealing in cryonics ...

Derived from the Greek kryos, meaning 'icy cold', cryonics is the practice of placing entire bodies, or heads or even just brains, into liquid nitrogen in the hope that science will one day discover a way to bring the dead back to life. At a dinner last year, British prime minister Gordon Brown was alarmed by a guest announcing plans to freeze himself. 'I would be doing the nation an invaluable service,' said acerbic talent-show judge Simon Cowell ...

Cowell, whose annual earnings are estimated at US$54 million, has forged a reputation for being a cold-blooded critic, condemning those who stand before him with comments such as, 'If your lifeguard duties were as good as your singing, a lot of people would be drowning'. He has himself described the show that made him a household name as, 'A musical version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' ...

The 1975 film adaptation of the Ken Kesey novel set the benchmark for a generation of filmmakers. Starring Jack Nicholson, the story takes place in an American asylum and is a study of the institutional process and the human mind. The film was only the second to win all five major Oscars, including one for its producer, Michael Douglas.