Oscar winner is new voice of 'NBC Nightly News'

Michael Douglas has a pair of Oscars, a gorgeous wife and pretty much all the other trappings you might expect of a movie star's life.

And, oh yeah, he's also the new voice of "NBC Nightly News."

Douglas made his debut as the evening newscast's announcer this week, intoning a single line -- "From NBC News world headquarters in New York, this is 'NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams'" -- at the start of each broadcast. Nice work if you can get it.

The "Wall Street" and "Basic Instinct" star, who played a TV-news cameraman in 1979's "The China Syndrome," takes over for Howard Reig, a long-time NBC announcer who retired two years ago. NBC has been using a recording of Reig's voice since then.

NBC tried to gin up interest in the new announcer last week, issuing a cryptic press release alluding to the new voice as someone "who has a rich, extensive, award-winning theatrical career for nearly 40 years." That fits the 63-year-old Douglas, who made his first screen appearances in the late 1960s.

So how does one convince a two-time Oscar winner to do an evening-news voiceover? By appealing to his "sense of romance and sentimentality," according to a statement from Williams.

"I called him and said, 'On top of all you've done as an actor, producer and Academy Award winner, this will mean a small slice of immortality in our industry," Williams says.